Barbara Chepaitis's Blog: http://aliterarylunch.blogspot.com/2015/07/frying-mad.html - Posts Tagged "writing"

I’m going to confess that there’s certain sitcom paradigms I can’t watch, no matter how funny they are. For instance, The Three Stooges are a riot, but they make me go ‘ouch.‘ Too many mirror neurons, I guess - those pesky neural impulses that make you feel what you see in others. I also can’t watch the sitcoms where an overweight, arrogant, insensitive and selfish man is married to an intelligent, good-looking woman who puts up with him.

I know, I know. The Honeymooners was brilliant, and Family Man is funny, but they both make me want to shout at the TV, “Walk away! Just walk away!” I don’t think that’s a mirror neuron problem. I think I just know too many real life women who live that way, and I project my frustration onto the fictional versions.

Of course, if I subscribed to conspiracy theories, I’d say those shows were written by people who want to encourage such behavior in women. In just the same way, that old frog prince story, which I’ve mentioned before, does. No matter how slimy that frog is, if you kiss him, you’ll get a prince, it says.

No, you won’t. I’ll say it again. In the original she did NOT kiss the frog. He was disgusting, and she slammed him into a wall. Then he turned into a prince. Then she kissed him. Okay? Okay? You get it?

Well, I feel better now. So onto the main point, which is, there’s nothing wrong with odd pairings, but they should be to your taste. I happen to like peanut butter and bananas. My husband leaves the room when I eat it. He enjoys chicken gizzards and hearts. I’d rather chew off my left arm.

And there are some pairings which, at first, seem suspiciously wrong, and turn out to be exactly right. Jaguar and Alex, one of my favorite fictional couples, have their fights now and then, but they’re right for each other. And I like The Simpsons because even though Homer is who he is, he goes well with that blue-haired lady, and loves her. Both couples know there’s a difference between loving tolerance of individuality, a loving expression of understanding for it, and putting up with crap.

And how do you know the difference? Here’s a story for you. A kind of love story.

When I started dating my husband I was also dating another man, living the single life. I happened to go see Titanic with both men, at different times of course. With the first man, as we watched he took my hand and got teary eyed as he spoke about how beautiful it was that the old couple was going down together. I agreed. It was beautiful.

But when I went with the man who would become my husband, as he watched he got agitated and said, “They could have tried to rig up something that floats,” and he went on to explain the various ways he would have made sure to get us both off the boat alive.

This isn’t my first marriage, so I understood that long term relationships all face their own Titanic at one point or another. And I understood that even though my pairing with Steve seemed odd, since he races cars, likes dogs, and doesn’t dance, he was a man of great integrity who would always place my well-being very high on his list.

After more than a decade with him, I can honestly say that I even think lovingly of the things about him that drive me crazy, because they’re all part and parcel of that integrity and capacity for love. No higher praise hath woman or wife.

I suppose it’s possible Alice felt that way about Ralph, too. Maybe they were bananas and peanut butter together. Or gizzards and rice. If so, I leave them to it. And I leave it to you to find your own particular recipe for lasting love.

While you do, you might want to try my version of Mole`, appropriate because it’s a loving relationship of unexpected flavors, and one you have to pay attention to while you concoct it. Throughout this recipe you should sniff, taste, adjust. Add your own touch to it. Make it your own. Use it in tamales. Because you know the rule - PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD!

You can keep up with Jaguar and Alex’s love story at wildside press And you can visit me at my website, wildreads.com

Ole` Mole`

NOTE: If you don’t have these chiles available, I’d just go with dried anchos, which are mild. If you like hotter, then go for hotter chiles.

1dried mulato chili
1 dried ancho chili
1 dried pasilla chili
1/2 cup ground almonds
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 onion, chopped
1/2 cup cocoa powder
dark chocolate to add to your taste
1 fresh sweet green pepper, chopped
2 cups chopped tomatillos
1 cup pureed tomato, fresh or canned

salt and pepper
olive oil
2 pounds boneless chicken breasts and/or thighs cut into chunks. (NOTE: If you prefer, you can use chicken pieces with the bones in, or a whole chicken cut up, but that will change the cooking time)

First, gut your dried chiles, taking out the seeds, ripping off the stem and so on. Put them into a small pot with about a cup of water, bring them to a boil, then turn the water off and let them soak until they get soft. If they complain, just ignore them. They’re fine where they are.

Then, take everything from almonds through chili powder and put it in a bowl together. Put an iron skillet on high heat and get it hot. Toss the stuff in the bowl into the hot skillet and move it around for about a minute - no more - then turn the heat off and keep moving it around a little. This is called a dry fry, and while you do it, you should breathe in deeply because it will smell incredibly good.

Pour the spices back into a bowl. Now is a good time to check your soaking chiles, and if they’re soft, puree them with the water they’re in, and the tomatillos.

Season your chicken with salt and pepper, and take some of the spices from the bowl and sprinkle it on the chicken as well. Put about a tablespoon of olive oil in the skillet you used for the dry fry, get it back onto high heat and when the oil is hot, add the chicken a little at a time, letting it get nicely golden outside.

Turn the heat down once the meat is seared to your liking, and let it cook on medium for about 15 minutes if you’re using the boneless meat. (It’ll go longer for the bone in.) Add the peppers and onions and garlic and and let it go about ten minutes more on medium to low.

Then, take everything out of the skillet, leaving the juices behind. Put the spices back in, pour in the pureed chili and tomatillo mixture, with the tomato puree. Keep the heat on a medium-low and let it simmer for a while. Breathe in deeply. Say, “Wowie that smells good!”

This is the time when I taste, and ask myself if I want more of anything. Often I toss in a cinnamon stick, add more cumin, and I season with salt and pepper. So taste. Sniff. Adjust.

When you’re happy with it, add your cocoa. Taste again. Adjust as you like. Add a chunk or two of dark dark chocolate ( the 70% cocoa kind) if you want. Taste and adjust some more. If you like, toss in some tabasco. It won’t hurt.

Then put the chicken back in the skillet and let it simmer for about 15-20 minutes on low until all the flavors are happily married, learning to do what’s best for each other.

Because that’s what love is all about! Barbara Chepaitis

When asked if Jaguar Addams just showed up in my head one day, I said no. My belly.

Here's the full interview.

Speaking of Writing

If you love to read series novels, or would love to write one, here's some insight into the mind of those who do so.


http://www.the-top-shelf.com/?p=3781

Managing the waiting game for writers, and a recipe for Patience Pasta at A Literary Lunch.

http://aliterarylunch.blogspot.com/2012/04/waiting-waiting-waiting.html

CREATIVE MOTHERING

This blog is late, deliberately. I was going to post something for Mother’s Day, and then realized my mother’s ghost would not be pleased.
She didn’t believe in Mother’s Day. She said, with some bitterness, that it was a Hallmark Card conspiracy, one day to relieve the guilt of those who didn’t do anything for their mother’s the rest of the year.
Have I mentioned she was a bit of an outlier? She was. She wouldn’t let us buy her presents or cards, though she would accept gifts of work (Clean your room! Pick up your socks!). We were also allowed to gather flowers from the woods for her, or make cards for her. And thus, she taught us an early lesson in anti-consumerism, in the value of the creative over the value of the economy.
It’s a lesson that stuck with me, in far too many ways. For instance, I never understood why getting a job was more important than writing. My mother worried about that, as well she should, because it was all her fault, as I told her many times.
But on the positive side, I really enjoy it when my husband uses old white packing paper to wrap my presents, drawing strange glyphs on the outside to hint at what’s within. (See picture below) That way, I get both the fun of a present, and the giggles of the guessing game.
I also believe that finding your creative side - whether it’s in a garden, a kitchen, at a keyboard or an easel - is the best way to feed your spirit. The best way to avoid feeling a hole that insists on being filled with useless stuff, mindless consumerism of all kinds. In the play Rent, the characters say that peace isn’t the opposite of war. The opposite of war is creativity. The same is true, I think, of greed.
Now, all this is not to say that I don’t enjoy getting bought presents, even on Mother’s Day. As a December birthday girl, I take any presents I can get. And I’ll admit that when my son sent me the BEST truffles in the world (called ‘No Chewing allowed), I was pretty damn pleased.
But he also sent me the story he just wrote, which made me weep in the best possible way because his writing (Oh, God help me! I raised a writer!) is such a reflection of his careful and clear-seeing soul. And this story happened to be about food, and death, and love:

The best foods aren’t necessarily the ones that take the longest to prepare. She knows this in her brain. But in her heart and her stomach, she knows that “T-I-M-E” time is a very special ingredient. “There’s a flavor to time,” Mike used to say to her. “It’s a different flavor in nearly every dish it’s a part of, but it’s there, you can taste it. And if it’s not there, you know. You know like you would know if someone came through that door tomorrow and told you he was Michael James Wallace. Even if he looked like me and sounded like me and smelled like me - you would know it wasn’t me. It’s a personal flavor, time. It changes the DNA of a dish.”


If your son, who was raised in a variety of very difficult circumstances, can write something like that, you know he was born with something fine and shiny in his spirit. And you can eat your truffles in peace and joy.
So here’s to my son, the kid who became an adult capable of bringing me good tears and laughter. The kid who made it possible for me to get presents in May. And here’s to my mother, who taught me to pass on to my child the primacy of the creative. Right now, I feel truly blessed by both.

Here’s a recipe that may be the epitome of creative triumph. It was made with ground venison given to me as a gift by a hunter friend, and honestly, I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but it came out really good. So give it a try, but keep in mind that the measurements are inexact because I was making my own card and coloring outside the lines. Amend as you like because you know the rules. PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD!

If you’d like to find out more about my writing, you can check out my website, wildreads.com, or you can find me on Facebook.


VENISON TERRINE


About a pound of ground venison
Half a pint of good dark rum
Thinly sliced onion
1 mango
6 slices of bacon
About a quarter cup of pancetta, sauteed golden brown
Salt and pepper
A teaspoon of thyme
1 egg


Soak the venison in the dark rum overnight. (You can use all of it, or save some to make yourself a Dark and Stormy - dark rum and ginger beer, the official drink of my writer’s MFA cohort.)

In the morning,drain the excess liquid. Brown your pancetta over medium heat until golden brown and add it to the venison. Also add salt and pepper, the thyme and the egg. (If you want, you can add heat with tabasco, or cayenne pepper).

Mush it all together and press it into a firm, firm block, like a small brick. Slice the brick into three layers and separate them.

Using a mandolin or some really good knife skills, make some really thin onion slices - using about a quarter of the onion. Peel your mango and also make really thin slices of that - About 6 to 10.

Place a layer of onion slices and then a layer of mango slices over the first venison brick layer. Pack the second venison layer on top, making sure it holds together. Add another layer of mango and onion to the top of that layer. Put the third venison layer on top and pack it down. (You see? You’re building something here.)

Put a final layer of onion and mango on top of your brick. Working carefully, wrap the strips of bacon around the entire brick.

Put it in an oven (I used my small convection toaster oven) and cook it at 350 degrees for about an hour.

Let it come to room temperature and serve, with love and gratitude for all good gifts.

June is the month when strawberries go ripe, and that is a wondrous thing indeed, and well worth celebrating because of how strawberries please our palates, and fill our souls with a sense of summer. In Mohawk, the word for strawberry is Eryahsa, which also means heart, and at the traditional Mohawk community of Kanatsiohareke, in Fonda NY, the people of the flint hold an annual festival celebrating and thanking this leader of berries.
In my yard, I celebrate them as well, in two different forms.
I have a big patch of tame strawberries, a Honeoye variety, plump and juicy and sweet. But before ever I planted a thing, our yard was already full of resident wild strawberries, which I first noticed as tiny pieces of red light, flashing in the shadowed green world of what passes for a lawn out our way. They look so different from tame strawberries the first time I saw them I wasn’t exactly sure what they were, or if they were edible, though the leaves were definitely strawberry leaves. Being bold and adventurous, I picked some and ate them, and when I did not die, I ate some more.
As they dissolved in my mouth, the taste of strawberries seeped into my skin, carrying undertones of something more. Something beyond strawberryness. Something far away, and singing.
Mmm. Yes. They taste like stars.
These, I thought, are worth nurturing, so I started making sure our patches had room to grow, room to spread and multiply and be - you know, fruitful. I didn’t want to change them, or make them bigger or more tame, even though they aren’t very practical. It takes a lot of plants to get a bowlful, topping them is persnickety work, and they don’t store well. They’ll never be suitable for mass market, but then again, I’m not sure I ever will be either, so we get along.
Another problem is the way they attract fairies, with whom they love to frolic at night. That gets noisy, which bothers some home owners. Their high-pitched laughter often fills my dreams. But I love their delicate insistence on being themselves, and I think their uniquely stellar flavor profile makes them invaluable for recipes both culinary and literary. For example, they’re the main ingredient in a love scene between Jaguar and Alex, in The Green Memory of Fear:

This is how her skin tasted to him. Like wild strawberries that disappear on the tongue and taste of stars. This is where they met each other, sweet and sure, direct as stars. He tasted and fed her the longing that lived in his mouth, and she drank it and gave him back what poured down her throat.
You taste like stars, he whispered into her.
Yum. Or, as the French say, Miam.
Now, I have been asked how I know what stars taste like. Well, really. I’m a writer. That’s one of my Superpowers. But you don’t have to be a writer to get this same wisdom. Just find a wild strawberry, and put it on your tongue. Or, if that’s not possible, take a moment to lick the lips of someone you love. Savor and sigh. Then you’ll know.

Here’s some simple ways to feature strawberries, tame and wild, on the stories of your table.



TAME STRAWBERRY MOLE (pronounced Mo-lay)

Dry fry a mix of about a quarter cup total of fennel seeds, cumin, cinnamon, ground almonds, and ancho chili powder.

Add this to two cups of really fine melted dark chocolate and stir.

Get a really big bowl of tame strawberries from your local farmstand or your yard or your neighbor’s yard. Dip them in the chocolate sauce and watch them go wild.

WILD STRAWBERRY FAIRY CAKE

Make an angel food cake, in a tube pan. Or, when it’s too hot to cook, go to the store and buy one already made. Slice about half an inch off the top, and scoop out a tunnel in the center.

Whip a cup of heavy cream with about a quarter cup of confectioner’s sugar. Or, if you prefer, add cocoa, because you know the rule: PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD!

Sprinkle your precious wild strawberries into the tunnel and spread a blanket of freshly whipped cream over them. They like that, and will wiggle and giggle some, but probably not too loudly.

Cut slices and add more berries and/or cream to the top. Dig in, but when Fairies clamor at your window, be sure to share.
The Green Memory of Fear

No, it’s not a typo. I wrote high attitude, and I meant it.
However, the title does grow from the fact that I’m currently about 8,000 feet above sea level in Gunnison, CO, where I’m faculty in a low residency graduate program in creative writing. In fact, I’m the boss of the fiction department.
Though our fall and spring semesters are on-line, for two weeks in the summer our students come out to to Western State College, and we eat, breathe, dream, and probably belch writing.
Those of us who come up from sea level also spend time adjusting to the altitude difference, and as I go through that process, I realize that every step up in attitude has about the same effects as shifts in altitude, emotionally and psychologically speaking.
When I first arrive in Gunnison I spend about three days being clumsy, stupid, tired but unable to sleep, struggling for breath when I climb stairs, and in general rather out of it. Rocky Mountain High indeed.
And every time I’ve stepped up a notch in my life – my first publications, my first teaching job, my current status as boss lady, and every time I’ve laid claim to my own power internally – I started out feeling clumsy, stupid, tired but unable to sleep, and disoriented.
You know what I mean, I’m sure. Ascent brings new vision and possibilities, and the confusion of uncertainty, as you ask yourself if you really know what the hell you’re doing.
No surprise there, really. Climbing a mountain has long been associated with touching the greatness of the celestial sphere, a broadening of the mind and heart. When I wanted Jaguar and Alex to discover each other for real in The Green Memory of Fear, I sent them up the mesa, “where the immensity of stars overhead was a reeling of all time imaginable.”
At the same time, Jaguar had to face her nemesis - not a walk in the park by any means. Going up the mountain asks you to bear with risk and difficulty before you get the perks. Vision plus difficulty breathing. An opening of the sky toward heaven, plus maybe falling off the mountain, which will hurt when you land.
This also holds true for times of personal evolution, which can be as, um, breathtaking as 8,000 feet up. I’ve watched my students struggle with discomfort, disorientation, as they climb from seeing themselves as wannabe writers to professionals, capable of managing the weirdness of the industry. Skilled enough to finish a novel, beginning to end. Also, I watched myself go through it, right here at 8,000 feet up.

Cattlewomen with High Attitude
During my first year here a strange set of circumstances got me involved with helping a Navy SEAL and Army Ranger who were stationed in Afghanistan bring an eagle they’d rescued back to the US. The entire story of that is a book of its own, forthcoming next May, but what’s important here is that the job grew much bigger than I anticipated, and I had to grow with it. I’d always been an outspoken woman, but I had to be her at a much higher level, cajoling Senators, news folk, and even the White House.
Often I was so afraid I felt like throwing up. Frequently my moves felt unnatural, wrong. A lot of times I woke in the night gasping for breath. But I stuck with it, and in a little while, I recognized my new self. She fit in my skin. I was comfortable with her, and trusted her to get me to the top of the mountain.
This year, as our first set of graduates go out into the world, I’m hoping they feel the same about their new selves. And you, dear readers, if you happen to be going through shift to High Atttitude, anticipate a time of adjustment. Don’t let it throw you off your mountain. Eat well and drink lots of water. Take good care of yourself, and let others care for you as well. Never be afraid to ask for help.
And when you feel comfortable in your skin again, enjoy the new view. You’ve earned it.

Below is some of what I eat for breakfast while I’m in Gunnison, where my cooking facilities and my time are severely limited.

You can find me at wildreads.com, and Jaguar at Wildside Books



GRAZING BREAKFAST IN GUNNISON

This one’s easy, and more about shopping than cooking.

About half a cup of marinated artichokes, store bought because I DON’T HAVE TIME TO PLAY WITH MY FOOD!
Two slices of really good bread, also store bought because I DON”T HAVE TIME TO PLAY WITH MY FOOD!
A hard boiled egg
A spoonful of bee pollen or honey
A few slices of Asiago cheese
Maybe some chopped up olives and/or tomatoes, if I can find good ones

Take the slices of bread and slather one with olives and marinated artichokes. Add slices of hard-boiled egg and, if they’re not whiny and flavorless, tomatoe slices.

Put the other slice of bread on top and press it down, even if it protests. If it continues to protest, you may want to check in with your doctor. Remember, not all highs are good highs.

Slice your slices in half and enjoy, with a lot of water, or maybe some juice. Munch on the cheese in between bits of the sandwich.

When you’re done, take the spoonful of honey or bee pollen with more water. I don’t know if it helps, but it tastes good.


BREAKFAST OUT IN GUNNISON

The WCafe, on Main Street, has some of the best Huevos going. Here’s how they do it:

A soft taco, with refried beans spread on it.
Two eggs – scrambled or over easy, as you like it – on top of the beans.
A generous portion of pork green chili on the eggs.
An equally generous portion of cheddar cheese on the chili.

Stick a fork in it and call it me happy.

The Green Memory of Fear