Susan Rooke's Blog, page 6

Of Pumpkins and “Jack-o’-Bone”

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who told me how much they enjoyed last week’s 500-word flash fiction, “One Evening at Happy Hour.” Gracias, folks! It was wonderful to hear that and I appreciate my readers so much! (If you haven’t read it yet, find it here.)

Now, unfathomable as it is, we find ourselves almost at the end of October. 2018 has one palsied foot in the grave. And as we careen crazily toward 2019 as if we’re riding the Runaway Mine Train at Six Flags, I ask myself (again) how the year got away from me so quickly. I’m pretty sure I was here and awake for more than two thirds of it, so how did I miss it all?

I’ve noticed that the older I get, the more this time of year provokes such thoughts in me. Also, October is my birth month, so it feels as if I get a double dose of gloom. (I’m kind of over the excitement of being another year older.) However, even though these late October days bring failing light and dying leaves to remind us of the impermanence of all things, I do love them. Cooler weather, open windows, flocks of ducks and sandhill cranes crossing the evening sky, the sweet-sharp scent of woodsmoke hanging in the air . . . After the stifling misery of a Central Texas summer, late October is a gift I look forward to opening.

Oh, who am I kidding? I love October because of Halloween! The time of year when it’s socially acceptable, even encouraged, to wallow in our mortality and embrace the monstrous! To slink disguised through the darkness, to listen for that anomalous *bump* in the house at night, to carve large orange squash into frightful or fanciful patterns and then set a live flame flickering inside them! Thank heavens for Halloween! Because it distracts me from the fact that Christmas is only two months away. And that after that, 2019 will be here and then it’ll be Christmas again and then 2020 will be here and then . . . You see where I’m going with this. I might as well start singing “The Doom Song” now.

But not just yet. Because first, there are jack-o’-lanterns. And we need to enjoy them while we can because they won’t last long.

These beauties are from The Son-in-Law and The Daughter. Wesley’s is the one on top. Both so fun that I wanted to share them with you. And to point out that neither design was produced by a stencil. (Wesley is clearly putting his engineering degree to impressive use.)

And here are my two designs. I sprained my back last week, so I’m going with the bottom one. It’ll be way easier to execute. Glen is insisting that he’ll clean out the pumpkin’s guts for me, and, much as that feels like cheating, I might just let him.

And finally, here’s a little something I wrote a couple of years ago that appeared in the Best Austin Poetry 2015-2016 anthology. It took home the Trick or Treat Award (a contest sponsored by poet, writer and Halloween birthday girl Carie Juettner) in the 2016 Austin Poetry Society Annual Awards. Because, just as I love the physical trappings of Halloween—the jack-o’-lanterns, the mounds of warty squashes, the witchy yard décor, the horror movies on TV—so do I enjoy reading (and writing) stories and poems that send a thrill up my spine.

Jack-o’-Bone

Pluck me from my bed of vines.

Cut me. Gut me hollow

as an empty boot. My flesh,

gouged. My seed, discarded.

Carve me lidless eyes incapable

of closing, that I might never

look away. My head trepanned,

you strike a flame inside me

and set my heart afire, then

call me lantern, crown me

with a circlet of my skull.

If I had hands I’d whittle you

the way you’ve whittled me,

scrape out your head to glow

through darkness until rot

snuffs you, until you are

but wind and memory, shadows

amid leafless trees, the space

between two blowing pages of a book.

Let it begin. My eyes are wide,

my rictus grin is graven in my skin.

I am the jester this unhallowed night.

Come. Smile. Taunt me.

I am Jack, in my crown of bone.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Just for Fun: Flash Fiction

The Realm Below, book 2 in the Space Between series, continues to chug along on its course to a January 2019 publication date. The significant hurdle of the first copy edit is cleared now, and what a relief that it turned out to be no big deal! My meticulous copy editor Danylle had so few changes that it took me less than a day to go through them. (Which means that The Daughter, my first editor, did her job well. Thank you, Katie!) There are, of course, important tasks still to accomplish before January, but thankfully, most of them won’t be done by me, since I have no clue how to do them. (And don’t want to know. My head hurts when I think about formatting the print and e-book versions.)

Nevertheless, it’s vital that I allot a generous chunk of each night to fret about these tasks. If I’m not awake and worrying at 3 A.M., then I’m just not doing my job. Such wakefulness is making it hard for me to focus on anything during daylight hours, however. Like writing blog posts. So instead of a regular post today, I offer you a bibelot for the fanciful, Halloween-y side of October: a piece of flash fiction I wrote a few weeks ago. It’s called:

One Evening at Happy Hour

“Mind if I join you?”

She flinched on her barstool, startled. Seriously? I just got here! She looked around. Oh, great. It’s the sleazeball that followed me in. “That seat’s all yours, but don’t get any ideas. You’re not joining me.” She flicked her gaze away from him again. Clearly, her instincts needed fine-tuning. She hadn’t even noticed him approach her.

“Aw, come on. I’m good company.” He moved closer and hovered over her shoulder before taking the stool next to her.

Ignoring him, she glanced again at the happy hour menu. A glass of something icy cold would be divine. She tried to catch the bartender’s eye, but it was difficult. The bar was filling up with the after-work crowd.

“I’ll get that for you. What are you having?”

She looked in his direction, then away. “That’s not necessary.”

“Why not?”

Persistence is so overrated. She sighed inwardly and pulled out a lie. “I’m meeting someone.”

“Yeah, you are. Me.”

Beginning to get annoyed, she swiveled on her barstool and turned her large, expressive eyes to stare him in the face. She knew the power of those eyes. They’d certainly scored her plenty of free dinners. This evening, though, all she wanted was a little time to herself. “What is your problem?”

“Problem? I don’t have a problem, you do. Because you’re not gonna get rid of me that easily. My attention’s all on you.”

Is this his idea of charm? “Look. Just leave me alone, okay? I said no, and that’s what I meant.”

“You’re a piece of work, you know it?” His tone had turned sneering. “Maybe you should look around, try to learn a little something. If you did, you’d see you’re nowhere near as hot as you think you are.”

“Buzz off. You’re way out of your league.” She was cold with fury.

“Nah.” He wiped a hand across his mouth, a nervous, jittery movement. “I’m having too much fun right here.”

“Hi, there. What can I get you?”

Thank God. She turned her stool toward the bartender. “I’ll have the happy hour martini, please. Dirty. With a twist.”

“And I’ll have what the lady’s having. But make mine extra dirty.”

It was the leer in his voice that did it. She waited until the bartender reached for the cocktail shaker before unfurling her tongue with a lightning fast motion. The next moment her maddening companion had disappeared.

The bartender put a cocktail napkin on the bar top and set her drink on it. “One Swamp Water martini, dirty, with a twist. Can I get you anything else? The fried crickets are half-off till 7. Maybe you aren’t that hungry now, though.” He smirked at her. “You know it’s mixer night, right?” He wiped down the bar in front of her with a towel.

“Oh, geez.” She stared at him for a second, then gulped.

“Yeah . . . That was one of our regulars. Good tipper, too.”

Gettin’ Judge-y with It

The reference section of my home library holds some of my most treasured and depended-upon books. This hefty volume is my trusty Webster’s dictionary—the Third New International, Unabridged version.

It lives in my office right beside my desk. I have a number of dictionaries of the English language, as well as dictionaries of other sorts . . .

. . . which are all very useful in their own ways. But the Webster’s, so full of fascinating tidbits, is the one I turn to most often. [I had no idea that “isinglass” is first defined as a very pure type of gelatin originally made from the air bladders of Russian sturgeons. Probably another reason those sturgeons are in decline.] Just today, in fact, I consulted Webster’s for its definition of “novel.” And here, at the top of page 1546, is what it says:

“An invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting.”

What particularly catches my eye there is the word “invented.” Yep, it’s just as I suspected. Novels are made-up! Who knew?

Well, everybody who reads novels, you’d think. But apparently not. The Daughter’s prediction, made years ago after she read an early draft of The Space Between, is coming true. One year after its publication, my book is managing to offend a tiny but slowly growing segment of the population that doesn’t understand the “invented” part of the definition. Some of them clearly think I’m going to Hell. As a person who tries to be kind and get along with everybody, I find that rather surprising. Hell? Me?

One person on social media even went so far as to share a picture of the book’s cover to their own feed. They commented on it, beginning with the disclaimer that they know nothing of me or my book. And then, after openly admitting they know nothing, guess what they did? That’s right. They got all judge-y on me. Complete with a quotation from their choice of holy text. (A text I wouldn’t dream of transcribing here, because I’m not sure it’s permitted.) It was basically about the swell fate that’s in store for my soul when I’m dead. (I’d like to thank that person for the warning and for taking the time out of their busy day to think about my immortal soul.)

The thing these people all have in common is that they think I’m playing fast and loose with the facts of their religious beliefs. But here’s the catch: I’m not playing with facts. I’m a novelist. By definition, this means I’m playing with fiction.

So what’s a misunderstood writer to do in the face of such objections? Keep writing, of course. In The Realm Below, the soon-to-be-launched second book in the series, my characters carry on speaking with their own voices and making their own decisions. I gave my good guys the space to be good, but also far from perfect. (One of them demonstrates his imperfection in a rather memorable fashion.) My bad guys had all the freedom they required to be nuanced and . . . interestingly flawed. Fictional characters are notorious for developing minds of their own, anyway, and mine are no different. And so they will continue to steer their own fates when I write the third book. I couldn’t stop them if I wanted to.

This means, I suppose, that The Realm Below will offend people too. (Including the ones who can’t be bothered to read it. Perhaps especially those people.) P.T. Barnum, circus owner and consummate showman, is said to have claimed that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Maybe that was the case in the 19th century. I don’t know how true it would be today, with our modern capacity not only to gratify ourselves instantaneously, but also to troll from the shadows and feud with virtual virulence. But bad publicity or good, it doesn’t matter. It’ll be how it’s going to be.

Come *ahem* Hell or high water.

The latest news: The Realm Below: The Rise of Tanipestis will be available for pre-order in early December, with the cover reveal coming in November!

Ceviche: A Recipe

When I was a teenager, I lived in Panama for several months. Panama City, the capital, is a coastal city with the Pacific Ocean at its door. I’ve never lived anywhere else quite like it. Seafood was abundant and spectacularly fresh, and the city had countless open-air cafés that served it. I still remember the evenings I spent in those cafés: the lively sparkle of city lights, the ocean smell and traffic fumes mingling with the savory aromas of grilling fish and beef, the garlicky chimichurri sauce often on the table as an accompaniment, the endless stream of pedestrians passing by or standing in noisy groups, laughing and flirting, moving to the beat of loud music. In these cafés, eating wonderful food simply prepared and made even more memorable by the raucous parade of life around me, my enthusiasm for the ceviche served there—the style I’m about to share with you—was born.

Which brings me to a confession. The word “ceviche” covers a wide range of possible ingredients and there are scads of recipes out there that make use of them. But I have to say right now that most of them don’t interest me. As much as I like shrimp, scallops, squid and octopus, I don’t want any of them in my ceviche. I also don’t want my ceviche studded with cubes of fruit. No avocado or tomato, please. No mango or melon, and definitely no papaya, which smells to me like a hair straightening product I used to use. I want it left alone. And to be more exact, I guess the version I make would be “Ceviche de Pescado,” (fish) as opposed to, say, “Ceviche de Pulpo” (octopus [nobody asked me, but I think “pulpo” is the most perfect word for octopus in any language]) or “Ceviche de Camaron” (shrimp). Finfish is the star ingredient. That’s it. With onion, lime juice, chile peppers and seasonings in supporting roles. Like this:

CEVICHE

1 lb. firm, white-fleshed skinless raw fish fillets, cubed

4 oz. fresh-squeezed lime juice, plus the juice of 1-2 extra limes

½ c. finely chopped onion

1 tsp. sugar

Tabasco or Cholula hot sauce, a couple of dashes

Fresh chiles, seeded and finely chopped, to taste

Salt and white pepper to taste

Tostadas for serving (optional)

Put all ingredients in a glass bowl (lime juice will react with aluminum and cast iron in vile and disgusting ways) and stir to combine. Cover and refrigerate. For the first 4 hours, stir frequently (about every 30 minutes). Ready to eat in 6 hours.

Notes:

• For larger or smaller quantities, the proportions are 1 oz. fresh lime juice (plus a little extra) and ¼ tsp. sugar to each 4 oz. trimmed fish. Make a quantity that you’re sure will be eaten up within 48 hours or less.

• As for the fish, snapper or grouper is fantastic. But since I didn’t want to pay $22.97 per lb. for grouper, I made this batch with Tilapia (for about 6 bucks) instead.

• I use Persian limes. If you’re using something smaller, squeeze 3 or 4 more limes instead of 1-2. The juice should come up to about ¼” (or a bit lower) below the top of the fish. Bear in mind too, that the fish and onion will exude some juices, adding to the quantity of the marinade in the bowl and creating a delicious blend of flavors.

• For the chiles, I use 2 jalapenos per pound of fish, because that’s what I grow and always have on hand. Serranos are great too.

• Yellow sweet onions are my choice here. They don’t overpower the fish.

• For 1 lb. of fish, I use a scant tsp. of fine sea salt and about ¼ tsp. white pepper.

• Conventional wisdom says to use only fresh fish fillets, but I’ve used (and enjoyed) flash-frozen. We don’t always have a choice in the matter, unfortunately.

• This recipe doesn’t call for cilantro, but I wouldn’t be averse to adding a sprinkling at the end.

• Many recipes for so-called “Classic Ceviche” call for much more lime juice. But then you’re often told to drain it after the fish has set, in order to prevent it from becoming too lime-y and sour. You won’t need to do that with this recipe. As long as you stir the mixture frequently for the first 4 hours, the fish will “cook” with the amount of lime juice I recommend.

Season with traffic fumes, flirting and loud music as desired. Enjoy!

Revisiting the *ick* Sardine Pineapple

In the interest of launching The Realm Below: The Rise of Tanipestis by the end of 2018, I’m finishing the last of The Daughter’s suggested edits to the book. I still have a few days’ worth of work to go. So to free up some time, I’m rerunning “What the Cat Wouldn’t Eat,” a favorite post from March of 2017, written soon after we moved into our “forever home.” In two weeks I’ll post an easy, delicious recipe for ceviche. (I made it yesterday morning and ate it for dinner last night. Yum!) In the meantime, cast your eyes over what was surely no one’s favorite party hors d’oeuvre, the Sardine Pineapple:

What the Cat Wouldn’t Eat

Chicken and Dumplings. Sweet Potato Pie. Double Peanut Butter Fudge. Chicken-Fried Venison. The women in my mother’s family—her mother, grandmother and aunts—were great Southern cooks, and my mother Eloise learned the best they had to teach her. She began in the Southern tradition too, but branched out considerably when her lifelong love for travel exposed her to a world of fabulous food. When she returned home, she’d recreate the dishes she enjoyed the most, record the particulars on index cards, then file them in her recipe box.

Over the years I’d mined those index cards for my favorites, copying them for my own collection. Many of these “recipes” played fast and loose with details, consisting only of a list of ingredients and maybe a terse final directive, like, “Serve over rice.” No measurements or proportions, no cooking times or temperatures. While typing up a recipe card, I’d have to press her for the specifics.

“But how much ice water do you need to make the pie crust?” I’d ask.

She’d respond with a breezy wave of her hand and a little laugh. “Oh, you know . . . just until the dough comes together.”

She was even less helpful with flour tortillas.

“Mother, for heaven’s sake! What on earth does ‘a knifeful of shortening’ mean?”

“Well, you just scoop some shortening out of the can with a knife blade . . .”

And so we’d hash out what her more abstruse recipes intended, pause for a sip of our champagne cocktails, and then I’d start copying another one.

I’ve had my mother’s recipe box for some years now, but mostly it’s been left untouched on a shelf. Last week, however, after unearthing it while unpacking from the move, I felt the urge to open it for the first time in a long while.

Mainly because I’ve yet to find my own recipe files.

The recipe I was looking for was Stuffed Peppers. I was making it from memory for dinner that night, and wanted to be sure I didn’t forget anything important. I was happy to see my recall was spot on.

But then curiosity impelled me to browse further, and I found this filed under “Dips”:

Dear . . . Lord . . . Festooning mashed-up sardines with pineapple leaves and sliced green olives? On purpose? You might wonder, in what universe would this little number be considered a feast for the senses? In the 1950s universe, that’s where. It calls for twelve 4 oz. cans of sardines. Twelve. My mother’s handwritten note on the card reads “make ½ recipe.” How about make none?

I did a cursory search under some other tabs: “Foreign Foods,” “Appetizers,” “Frozen Sweets,” “Italian.” My faith in my mother’s palate was restored when I found nothing else even close to this abomination. In fact I found a lot of delicious things I’d forgotten about, foods I plan to cook my way through as we settle into the forever home.

But I couldn’t shake the thought of that newspaper photo—the lopsided, unintentionally hilarious mound of oily, gussied up fishy glop. Not to mention the unappetizing pairing of two such incongruous words. “Sardine.” “Pineapple.” Ugh.

Then I remembered an incident many years ago that made the Sardine Pineapple seem a bit less anomalous.

Periodically my mother would make a huge pot of what she called “vegetable soup,” though it wasn’t what most people would think of by that name. She kept a big glass jar in the freezer, and whenever she had leftovers that we didn’t get around to eating—whether vegetables, meats, casseroles, whatever—instead of pitching them out, she popped them in that jar, right on top of whatever was already frozen beneath the new layer. When the jar filled up (however many weeks that took), she’d thaw out the contents and cook it in a stew pot for several hours, along with seasonings and the fresh ingredients needed to balance out the vegetable-meat ratio of that batch. The result was her version of vegetable soup. Though you might not believe it, it was always delicious, marvelously complex and flavorful. She taught me to follow the same frugal habit, and we were both proud of the fact that food never went to waste in our kitchens.

One of us was too proud. I was home on a visit, sitting at the kitchen table and devouring a bowl of my mother’s vegetable soup. I saw her stoop to retrieve something from the trash.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I added something different to the soup today.” Then she wordlessly held out a small, empty can so I could read the label.

Cat food.

As my jaw dropped, she said, “Sbai didn’t like it, but I couldn’t let it go to waste!”

Well, Sbai, you spoiled Siamese, maybe you would’ve liked the Sardine Pineapple.

My Brain is Toast. Crunchy, Charred, Toasty Toast.

The twelve-step countdown has begun. After 2 weeks of long days, I wrapped up the first three of the steps I’d outlined in the previous post. The Realm Below is now much closer to publication. It was two weeks of minimal cooking, minimal laundry (oh, wait—I swore I’d never do laundry again. Dang it!), minimal errands, minimal everything except working on the book.

1. Starting as soon as I finish this blog post, I read the printed manuscript for consistency, continuity, loose ends, etc. DONE

2. I start again at the beginning with the document on my laptop, doing a line-by-line edit, correcting typos, simplifying sentence structure and fixing any problems I found in step 1. This of course means I’m rereading it. DONE

3. I email the manuscript to The Daughter. Katie is my first outside editor, reading for all the same issues that I have supposedly addressed already in steps 1 and 2. She never fails to find things I’ve missed. DONE

Yesterday (Monday, August 13th) was a 12-hour workday, but it was worth it. By evening I’d completed step 2 and then I wrote another 700-800 words to tidy up the ending. Time for step 3, firing off the manuscript to The Daughter. With enormous relief, I pushed “send” and staggered away from my desk, collapsing on the living room sofa with the stiff highball Glen had poured me.

I was lifting it to my lips when my phone dinged. What’s this? I wondered. Oh, a text from Katie. I read it with the warm expectation that she would tell me how excited she was to finally read it. No. She was requesting a paper copy.

I panicked, worrying about even such a tiny delay, since I’d still like to get the book out by the end of the year. Glen offered to print it out the next day and overnight it to her, but luckily, she was thinking a lot more clearly than I was. She decided she’d transfer the document to a flash drive and run it over to Kinko’s for printing. Brilliant! With that problem out of the way, then she told me how excited she was.

Which made two of us. So I took that sip I’d been meaning to.

Now I get to take some time off. Relaxing, running only the most necessary errands, doing the domestic things that have been shoved aside. And sitting on the porch watching the cows (it’s quite therapeutic, provided the bull isn’t tearing down the fence again to get to the neighbor’s cows). Where’s this free time coming from? Well, it turns out step 4 is unnecessary. This one:

4. While Katie is busy doing that, I’ll reread The Space Between to be certain I haven’t introduced inconsistencies or contradictions in the sequel. And not for the first time, I will tear my hair out and ask myself why I thought it was a good idea to write a series.

Technically it’s only the first part of step 4 that I won’t need to do. Katie’s rereading TSB herself, which means . . . I don’t have to! She’ll catch any inconsistencies that may have slipped in. (She won’t be tearing her hair out on my behalf, though, so I’ll still have to do that.) Her efficiency will give my brain time to recover from writer’s rigor, or, as I like to call it (after just now googling the genitive for conscriptor), rigor conscriptoris.

Which brings me to the inimitable Edward Gorey.

I’ve been a huge fan of his books since childhood, and one Christmas when I’d just ended my first semester of college, my mother gave me The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel. By then I’d been writing short stories (bad) and poetry (worse) for years, slowly improving. But what I longed to do most of all was write a novel. Gorey’s description of Mr Earbrass’s biennial novel-writing method captivated me. I pored over the book countless times, imagining myself doing as Mr Earbrass does, producing a novel every other year, living the literary life. Decades passed and none of that happened, of course. But . . .

The morning after sending the manuscript off to The Daughter, I thought of Mr Earbrass again, in particular this page:

And I realized that was exactly how I felt.

Your faithful correspondent,

Susan Earbrass, signing off until August 30th.

The Realm Below: Coming Soon(-ish) to a Bookstore Near You!

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with great pleasure and a fragile hold on reality that I inform you that, by the time you read this post, Book 2 in the Space Between series will be in the editing phase. A few minutes ago I finished typing “STILL NOT THE END” at the bottom of page 245 and sent the manuscript of The Realm Below: The Rise of Tanipestis off to Glen for printing. And now, just as it did before The Space Between was published, it’s dawning on me that the writing is the easy part.

Oh, sure, there’s no question that writing is hard. Over the past weeks of intense work and terrible sleep patterns, my mind has suffered a catastrophic failure and my brain would fit in a teaspoon (how’s this? I just typed “catastrotic” and it looked perfectly fine to me). But that’s nothing compared to the work that’s looming in the coming months. There’s still a long road ahead to get this book published. And judging by my emotional state last time, I expect I’ll have two or three nervous breakdowns along the way. (Some of you readers out there have also published books in the last year or two. I’d love to hear how the process affected you.) Here are the steps that come next (and I might have missed some):

1. Starting as soon as I finish this blog post, I read the printed manuscript for consistency, continuity, loose ends, etc.

2. I start again at the beginning with the document on my laptop, doing a line-by-line edit, correcting typos, simplifying sentence structure and fixing any problems I found in step 1. This of course means I’m rereading it.

3. I email the manuscript to The Daughter. Katie is my first outside editor, reading for all the same issues that I have supposedly addressed already in steps 1. and 2. She never fails to find things I’ve missed.

4. While Katie is busy doing that, I’ll reread The Space Between to be certain I haven’t introduced inconsistencies or contradictions in the sequel. And not for the first time, I will tear my hair out and ask myself why I thought it was a good idea to write a series.

5. Katie emails her suggestions to me, we argue over some of them and I make the necessary adjustments.

6. I email the manuscript to the insightful and indomitable Mindy Reed, the first of my editors at the wonderful The Authors’ Assistant, my editorial/promotional firm. She does the developmental edit.

7. At some point I send my cover artist, the very talented Heidi Dorey, a representative chapter so that she can begin working up some cover designs.

8. I get the manuscript back with Mindy’s suggestions, reread it and make the necessary adjustments.

9. I email the manuscript back to The Authors’ Assistant for the first of two rounds of copy editing.

10. By now I’ve suffered major hair loss and catastrotic failures of important organs due to sheer boredom with the material, but nevertheless I get the manuscript back, reread it and make the necessary adjustments.

11. I begin meeting often with my publicist, the indispensable Danielle Hartman Acee (also of The Authors’ Assistant), who has a winning smile and the courage and ferocity of a tiger. Which is good, because I’m a complete wimp. She formats the manuscript for e-book and maps out a battleplan to send the book [irony alert!] rocketing into the bestseller stratosphere. We choose and finalize the cover design, do something or other I can’t recall with the Library of Congress, settle on a publication date and get the printer to whip me up a proof copy to check for any last-second glitches. And I . . . will . . . reread . . . it. Even if it kills me.

12. And then, so help me, I start writing Book 3 in the series. Brain or no brain. Whew.

It’s coming. Eventually.

The Machete: A Cocktail (and still REALLY good!)

Intro: As I mentioned two weeks ago, today’s post will be a rerun. Though I’m making great strides (121,000+ words and counting!), I still need some time to finish writing The Realm Below: The Rise of Tanipestis. Especially after the delay caused by the left hand vs. demonic clothes dryer snafu. So today, in this post from May 2016, I’m revisiting the cocktail I accidentally invented due to a lack of the proper ingredients. And it’s a good one. I get requests for it when out-of-towners like The Daughter and Glen’s sister Denise come to visit. We all love it, and it’s ideal for this sultry weather. Saharan dust? Who cares? Wash it down with a Machete! Here you go:

The drink I’m about to describe to you came about because of a character flaw. I’m rarely capable of following a recipe as written. Sometimes this leads to good things. One of my favorite bread recipes began life as Sour Cream Bread in James Beard’s wonderful book, Beard on Bread. I’ve baked from my hardback copy of this book so many times that the cover has fallen off. But I never did bake his Sour Cream Bread, because the first time I went to make it, the closest thing to sour cream in the fridge was whole milk yoghurt. Did I run to the grocery? Nah. I subbed in the yoghurt ounce for ounce, and a lifelong favorite, Yoghurt Bread, was born.

The Machete is a similar case. Our daughter Katie, a talented cocktail hobbyist, had told me precisely how to make a Mojito. She’d done her online research, her bar top tinkering, and emailed me a recipe for the result. It calls for white rum (of course she specified the brand), angostura bitters, fresh-squeezed lime juice, simple syrup (1 part sugar to 1 part water), and exactly 9-10 leaves of mint. Glen and I had planted our spring herbs, and the mint was taking off. Along came a warm afternoon, and there it was—the perfect excuse to make ourselves some Mojitos! Then I started assembling the ingredients and realized it was Beard on Bread all over again.

I didn’t have white rum; I had gold. Didn’t have limes, but I had lemons. No angostura bitters, but oddly enough I found an unopened bottle of orange bitters in the pantry. No idea where it came from. So: gold rum, orange bitters, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup, and mint. How could that be anything but good? I got out the cocktail shaker and made a double batch for Glen and me. (Did I count out 18-20 mint leaves? Or even 9-10? Pffft. No.) Delicious. It needed a name.

This is as close as I get to counting mint leaves.

I wanted a name sort of like mojito. Something conjuring Latin America, subtly masculine. I wondered if machito was a word in Spanish, and if so, did it stem from macho? I looked it up. It’s a word, alright, and it’s a diminutive of macho. But it turns out machitos are a dish made from the small intestines of livestock, typically young goats, fried up and/or stuffed with various other ingredients. The details are vague. A couple of descriptions likened the dish to haggis, the Scottish specialty made from sheep offal and oatmeal (among other savories), and traditionally cooked in a sheep’s stomach. Three thoughts on this:

1. I’m sure machitos are delicious.

2. I can’t understand why I’ve never heard of them before.

3. I don’t want to name a cocktail after them.

Then I noticed that in the list of search terms that popped up as I began typing “mach—” was the word machete, also sharing etymological roots with macho. This sounded perfect for a drink made from gold rum. Rum, a Caribbean, Latin American alcohol, is made from sugarcane. What is sugarcane cut with? Among other things, machetes. Kismet.

THE MACHETE

In a cocktail shaker, put:

A sprig of mint, slightly bruised

2 ½ oz. gold rum (Flor de Caña Añejo Oro is perfect in this!)

1 oz. fresh lemon juice (not bottled shelf-stable juice)

1 Tbs. simple syrup (1:1)

2 dashes orange bitters

Add ice to the shaker and shake for 30 seconds. Pour contents into a glass (remove bruised mint sprig), or strain into a glass filled with ice. Garnish with a fresh sprig of mint. Makes 1.

Enjoy!

Crunch Time

I’ve been doing a lot of cooking over the past couple of months, as you could probably tell from the crawfish, the ice cream with chocolate shell topping, the vichyssoise and the Caesar Salad of the last four consecutive posts. (And let’s not forget the Sweet Batter Bread!) Sometimes that nesting, nurturing mood strikes me, and when it does, there’s no telling what will come rolling out of the kitchen. The house will smell delicious, there’ll be homemade bread in the toaster and something savory roasting in the oven or bubbling on the stove.

Well, it’s a good thing I got to indulge those kitchen cravings when I did, because now my cooking is on hold. Twelve days ago I broke a bone or two in my left hand while doing the laundry. And the important contributions an uninjured left hand makes to almost everything I do came as an unpleasant surprise to my right-handed self. For instance:

• Making the bed (However, I can still do a better job with one hand than Glen did [once] with two. It was sweet of him, though.)

• Showering, getting dressed and flossing my teeth

• Taking care of our Australian Shepherd Lucy and Queen of All She Surveys Phoebe (Thank heavens The Daughter was here for a visit when I hurt myself. She fed the animals and cleaned Phoebe’s Cat Box of Diabetic Doom for three days before she had to fly back to Colorado. Thank you, Katie!)

• Driving anywhere (Grocery shopping, PO Box checking, appointment-keeping? Cancelled. All of it.)

• Cooking, of course (Thankfully, Glen knows his way around a kitchen, so we’re not going hungry. In fact, we’ve learned that his breakfast tacos are better than the ones I make with both my hands.)

• But here’s the one that feels like the biggest hindrance: typing. Since the laundry accident, typing has become a task I have to perform almost entirely one-handed, although the injury is getting a little better. Slowly.

Glen calls me “Monkey Arms” because I have a history of flailing my limbs about and banging them into things. Years ago I broke my right hand in an inglorious moment during a throw cushion/glass-topped coffee table incident. (Don’t ask.) The result of this current round of gracelessness is that I’m behind on finishing The Realm Below. I’d still like to have it out before January 2019, but this is crunch time now; we’re in the butt end of 2018 already. I have a few thousand words to go, and then comes beta-reading and editing, formatting, etc. It may be doable, but I’m trying not to get overly stressed in case it isn’t. I’ll just have to give it my best shot.

So unless I make tremendous progress on the sequel to The Space Between over the coming two weeks, the July 19th blog post will likely be a rerun of an earlier one. (This one is post # 92, so I have a few to choose from.) Please forgive me, but doing that would give me a much-needed month to focus entirely on finishing the writing of Book 2 (and all that typing!). After that, the rewriting shouldn’t be much of a problem. Fingers crossed. I’ll also be saving time on some household chores. Like the laundry, for example, which I plan never to do again.

Some of you might be wondering, “But how on earth do you break your hand doing the laundry, Monkey Arms?”

In these two easy steps:

1. You remove Glen’s damp blue jeans from the washing machine and, using both hands, begin to vigorously shake the wrinkles out of them before throwing them into the clothes dryer.

2. You’re still shaking them when your left hand loses its grip on the denim, and you watch helplessly as this appendage goes crashing at top speed into a corner of the dryer’s exterior. *crunch*

(There was a third, verbal step, but it isn’t repeatable.)

That’s the method I used, at any rate. And guess what? It worked like a charm!

Caesar Salad: A Recipe for the Real Thing

I was going to share this recipe weeks ago. Then, on the afternoon that I was driving to the grocery store to purchase the necessary ingredients, Glen called and invited me to lunch. Of course I took him up on it, figuring the grocery store could wait until the next day. That evening, contaminated romaine lettuce was all over the news, so I shelved the post for a future date when we could all, I hoped, eat romaine again without requiring hospitalization. Some days later, lettuce grown in Arizona was fingered as the culprit and Americans were cautioned to be sure of where lettuce came from before buying. The information seemed to hold up, but I waited a bit longer before finally buying California lettuce a few days ago. That night we ate Caesar Salad without suffering any ill effects. So caveat emptor, I guess, and thank heavens for timely lunch invitations from Glen.

The reason I wanted to share this recipe in the first place is because of the listless, boring concoctions that too often pass for Caesar Salad in restaurants these days. I miss what it used to mean: fresh, crisp romaine, dressed with a creamy emulsification of egg yolks and olive oil, redolent of parmesan, garlic and anchovies. The croutons were crunchy, made in-house from real bread. They weren’t tasteless Styrofoam cubes from a box. Such Caesars are rare now, though. Few even get within hailing distance of raw eggs, thanks to another food danger: salmonella.

Nobody wants to risk salmonella over a salad dressing, of course, but you don’t have to, because there are at least two options for avoiding it. You can buy raw, pasteurized-in-the-shell eggs (which in my area come in one size: large), or you can pasteurize them in the shell yourself. Since I can buy them already pasteurized, I’ve never done it myself, but google it and you’ll find plenty of sites describing the method.

Make the croutons first, and even the day before. Picky as I am about making my own bread, I make the croutons from a store-bought baguette. (It saves me a lot of time that I can then spend having a cocktail and relaxing with The Husband and The Daughter, as we did together just a few days ago. The Son-in-Law couldn’t come for this visit. Enjoy the pictures, Wesley!) Then, once the romaine is washed and thoroughly dried, the salad goes together quickly.

CAESAR SALAD

To Make the Croutons:

• Cut a baguette into ¼” or slightly thicker rounds.

• Brush both sides of each round with a mixture of olive oil and melted, unsalted butter in about equal proportions.

• Toast the croutons on both sides under the broiler until they are golden brown (and deliciously crunchy).

• Set the croutons aside. Once they have cooled, either continue to make the salad, or place them in an airtight container or plastic bag and store them at room temperature until ready to use.

To Make the Dressing:

In a mortar and pestle (or in a blender or on a cutting board, see Notes below):

Mash 3 anchovy fillets with 2 medium peeled garlic cloves (OR use 2 rounded tsp. anchovy paste instead of the fillets).

Stir in:

1 tsp. Colman’s Mustard powder

2 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce

½ c. olive oil (you will likely need to add more)

several generous grindings of freshly ground black pepper

the juice of ½ of a large lemon

Transfer the mixture to a chilled, empty salad serving bowl and add:

2 large or extra-large raw egg yolks (from pasteurized eggs)

Whisk until the dressing thickens slightly. Taste it. You can add more of any of the previous ingredients at this point to create the particular balance of flavors that you want. Much depends on the size of the garlic cloves, how much juice the large lemon produces, etc. (I frequently add more olive oil.) Then add:

2 heaping Tbs. grated Parmesan (you’ll be adding more soon)

The reserved croutons, as many or as few as you like

Toss the croutons to coat with the dressing, then add:

1 head trimmed, washed and thoroughly dried romaine lettuce, cut across into broad strips

1 heaping Tbs. grated Parmesan (and even more, if you like)

Toss the salad very well, longer than you think necessary. A good two minutes works. Then, you know what to do. Enjoy!

Notes:

• I always slice the entire baguette and make croutons from all the rounds. The ones that don’t go in the salad make delicious crunchy crackers for soft cheeses and other spreads!

• To make the dressing, I use a mortar and pestle up through the step of adding the lemon juice. Then I transfer it to the bowl in which I’ll serve the salad and add the egg yolks, followed by the rest of the steps. You can use a cutting board to mash the anchovies and garlic together and then put it in the serving bowl to finish. Do whatever works for you. Some people prefer to use a blender, and in that case you’d probably have to reserve some of the olive oil to drizzle in after adding the egg yolks. I personally think too much of the dressing stays in the blender jar instead of going on the salad.

• There are legions of wooden salad bowl aficionados. I’m not one of them, preferring glass. To me, wooden salad bowls are infused with the funk of their dead salad ancestors.

• This Caesar is the version I came up with many years ago after watching it being prepared tableside on a number of occasions at many different restaurants, and this recipe reflects my tastes. For instance, I like lots of croutons because they’re heavenly when coated with the dressing. The quantities are very flexible. I’ve never seen a waiter get out a set of measuring spoons or a measuring cup. One thing I can tell you for sure is don’t use whole eggs. In the 1990s, I saw it made that way at a ritzy private club in San Antonio. The resulting Caesar was . . . how can I put this? . . . slimy.

• The Daughter and I love the leftover salad just as much as the freshly prepared. Yes, even the croutons. Please don’t throw any leftovers out until you’ve sampled them.

One more thing. I wrote this post while remembering the wonderful Anthony Bourdain. A terrific, engaging writer and introspective thinker. Witty, sharp, acerbic, snarky. Holder of often sneering opinions. I realize that he probably would have sneered at this post. But I wouldn’t care. I miss that sneer.