Alison Kent's Blog, page 9

Cooking under pressure

For Christmas, the husband bought me this Nesco Pressure Cooker. I'd seen the box hidden in the dog's crate, covered by a sheet for a couple of weeks, and just KNEW he'd got me the Kitchenaid mixer I'd asked for. Alas, such was not the case. And I'm sure when I opened the box in our early morning husband and wife gift exchange, my expression looked a lot like this. First of all, I wanted the Kitchenaid. Secondly, who hasn't heard horror stories of pressure cookers exploding? I talked to my mother later that morning and she told me about being a young wife in the 1950s and blowing up a pot roast and potatoes! The impetus for the pressure cooker purchase was this recipe which I've cooked many times and has turned out beautifully, but which I cooked up one weekend when the husband was home, using an obviously bad bag of beans. They. Would. Not. Cook.

I knew it was the beans, not the cooking method, but that was fine. If he wanted an explosion, I'd give him one! I read up on pressure cooking and realized cooking an entire meal in such a short amount of time was an AWESOME concept. Also, this one works as a slow cooker. I have a slow cooker, but almost everything I SLOW cook gets done way too fast, so I've stopped using it for most anything but soups. So, when I finally pulled this out of the box to actually use sometime this month, I had some country style pork ribs and knew I wanted to do a white bean soup with them. Enter Miss Vickie – the most amazing website ever for pressure cooking information. (Also, she has a cookbook.) Now, most of her recipes are designed for the old style stovetop cookers – the ones that started all the bad stories about blowing up. This electric version? Won't happen. Doesn't mean my first time out wasn't scary. I didn't have the seal knob turned in the right direction, and though the ribs and beans (pre-soaked) were cooking, steam was venting the entire time. I sent the husband a couple of panicked texts, then finally unplugged the cooker until he got home, heh.

This was the recipe I used for the navy bean soup. And it was wonderful, and I actually had both poblanos and jalapenos on hand. The husband next cooked red beans and refried them, but the cool thing is that we're cooking beans in MINUTES as opposed to HOURS. I'll be doing more experimenting to get the timing right, but as a big fan of all things bean, I'm excited. The husband next stuffed a pork sirloin with onions, mushrooms, and poblanos and cooked that. He made up his own recipe, pre-cooking the veggies to release all the good savory stuff, and the dish was wonderful. Monday night I made these pork chops and baked potatoes with salsa, and using the sauce as a gravy on the potatoes was SO delish! Then last night I made homemade barbecue sauce from a recipe on the Cook's Illustrated website (subscription site) and cooked a london broil / flank steak in that along with some caramelized onions. So SO good. And thirty minutes from locking the lid till being scooped onto our plates. Well, thirty cooking, another ten or so to let the steam release before the cooker would open. Also, the time spent with the sauce, which I did in the afternoon to let sit and thicken. But, every writer needs something to do during the day to get away from the computer, heh, so I didn't mind that so much.

Anyhow, I'm becoming a pressure cooking convert. I won't be cooking tonight as we've got leftover barbecue. And I just got Miss Vicki's cookbook yesterday, so I want to peruse more of her recipes. Though it's always possible I'll put on a pot of porky pinto beans before this rainy winter's day is done!

Can one know too much about a writer?

And by knowing too much, I'm not talking about all the things I reveal about how I spoil my dogs and the cats who live in my hedge. I suppose an author's politics can get in the way of a reader with differing views connecting with their books. Seems I remember a kerfluffle or two about an author posting her candidate's banners on her website. (And please don't hold Rick Perry against me just because I live in Texas.) I've also seen readers post that an author's online behavior will turn them off to reading his/her work. I've purposefully picked up an author's books because I've really enjoyed how they interact with others in cyberspace. And, yes, there are a couple of authors who I won't read because I've been turned off by things they've said or done, but in most of those cases I didn't like their books to begin with!

Most of the time, I have no trouble separating a personality from the product. What's weird, though, is as an author, knowing another author's process and having THAT impact how I feel about their work. I was reading a book not too long ago, and I hit a point that didn't ring true for me. It so happened that I'd heard this author talk about how she plotted, and I kept wondering if her admission was what was hanging me up. I could see her not knowing what was happening and writing on, intending to come back and smooth things over. And yet it never felt smooth to me as a reader. In fact, the book was almost a wallbanger.

All of that said, the purpose of this post is to let anyone who cares know I'm going to put my issues with my weight out there publicly but I'm going to do so in another blog. Anyone who's struggled with extra pounds knows the insidious nature of dealing with something so personal. But there's also something comforting in sharing our woes and knowing we're not alone. Kinda like when we struggle with anything in life. Even the writing. ;) So if you want to follow along, you can do that here: I Am Losing It.

Someone's been sleeping in my bed!

Got up early this morning, made coffee (I just spelled that coughee, heh), read and responded to email, made the bed, chatted with the husband and daughter, caught a kitty and took her to the vet to be spayed, came home, wrote some words, showered, returned to the bedroom for clothes and found this. This was NOT how I left my bed. My comforter was pulled over my pillow. There was not a nice comfy nest there.

I blame this guy.

And the new year starts TODAY!

Honestly, the past eight days have brought more things to deal with than we usually face in a month. I came down with the flu on 12/29, meaning I was hacking up lung parts on New Year's. #1 Girl was also in pain, dealing with an impacted wisdom tooth. That didn't stop her on New Year's Eve from taking off for a 4 hour drive to Baton Rouge to see her boyfriend who was there with family from Florida. Ninety minutes into the trip, her alternator went out. The husband loaded up tools, stopped by the auto parts store, and hit the road. By the time he got to her, two Hispanic men had stopped and ended up switching out the alternator for her, yay. On New Year's Day, the husband cooked our wonderful meal of Hoppin' John, and then on his birthday, the 2nd, he got frozen pizza, no cake, and no real presents because what I wanted to buy him was something I needed him to pick out. It arrived on the 5th, along with a second gift, and our new bed that was our Christmas gift to each other. In the meantime, I'd been doing nothing but hacking, downing Mucinex, Delsym, Benadryl, Sudafed, Tylenol and doing a lot of sleeping sitting up. I tried to sleep in the new bed the night it arrived, but spent most on the sofa. And writing? Please. I couldn't string a coherent sentence together. He did get a birthday cake at work on the 3rd, and by the 7th, I was feeling well enough to bake cupcakes for #1 Girl's birthday on the 8th. But she didn't get to do anything for her special day because she was still recovering from her oral surgery to remove the wisdom tooth on the 4th. And then on the 6th, the husband accidentally let Second Dog out the front door, and had to chase him down when Takumi went after one of the hedge kitties. In the process, he broke his toe. Or he's decided it's not broken, but it looks like it belongs to a zombie and could fall off any moment. We ventured out on Saturday, a quick trip to Costco for a monitor, and to the grocery store, and by the time we got home, I couldn't breathe. He couldn't walk.

Because of all that, I decided the new year didn't start until today. I mean, how can anyone strive for goals or work on new habits or change for the better when any moment the earth might swallow them whole? I woke up extra early because of severe thunderstorms rolling through, but I put my head down and had the day's required words written by 10:40. By 11:30, I was back in bed and I slept two hours. I believe I am going to make it! I was beginning to wonder, but things are looking up!

Writing Doubts

If you're a writer and you don't read Chuck Wendig's Terrible Minds site you might want to. And if you're a writer, you'll know the power of words, but you'll also know words are only words and his use of them is meant to elicit a reaction and you won't be offended. ;) Here's a snippet from a post he did last year on doubts. Good stuff.

There's doubt. A gaunt and sallow thing. It's starved itself. It's all howling mouths and empty eyes. The only sustenance it receives is from a novelty beer hat placed upon its fragile eggshell head — except, instead of holding beer, the hat holds the blood-milked hearts of other writers, writers who have fallen to self-doubt's enervating wails, writers who fell torpid, sung to sleep by sickening lullabies.

Suddenly Old Mister Doubt is jabbering in your ear.

You're not good enough.

You'll never make it, you know.

Everyone's disappointed in you.

Where are your pants? Normal people wear pants.

You really thought you could do it, didn't you? Silly, silly penmonkey.

And you crumple like an empty Chinese food container beneath a crushing tank tread.

I followed a link from Allison Brennan's blog at Murder She Writes to this one at Terrible Minds. Pop over and read Allison's, too. Always nice to know we're not alone.

DOWN THE DARKEST ROAD – a review

Deeper Than the Dead introduced Tami Hoag's millions of fans to Oak Knoll, a small California town that, in the mid-eighties, seemed as idyllic as any . . . until the See-No-Evil killer shattered that notion. It took FBI agent Vince Leone and a new technique called "profiling" to put an end to the trauma.

Secrets to the Grave brought Leone's teacher-turned-child- advocate wife, Anne, into a central role. Together with Vince and local sheriff 's deputy Tony Mendez, she solved an Oak Knoll murder with a particularly challenging mystery: The victim never existed.

And now Hoag returns once more to Oak Knoll for the third installment of this bestselling series. Through Leone's pioneering, science-based investigatory skills, Hoag explores the early days of forensic police work. And through the chilling case at the heart of Down the Darkest Road, she hooks ever more readers into the meticulously crafted, all-too-terrifying world of Oak Knoll, where the scariest secrets of all can be found . . . Down the Darkest Road.

Since I'd read Deeper Than the Dead and Secrets to the Grave, I had to read Down the Darkest Road to see where Hoag took the series and the characters. Though I did eventually enjoy the book, it's my least favorite of the three. For me, there was too much introspection by the main protagonist, Lauren Lawton, but also there was a plot device used early on, the unreliable narrator, that I thought was used poorly and left me nearly throwing the book at a later revelation. I don't have a problem with the device, and I actually whooped when reading Robert Gregory Browne's DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN and realized how he'd used it. Granted, part of this could be me being sick and not reading closely, but even after finishing the book, I thought back to the first scene and contend the point of view was poorly done. Spoiler below.

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If Lauren knew Ballencoa was living in Oak Knoll, why would she rush after him and supposedly follow him (this all in her viewpoint) and be SURPRISED to see him? Made no sense, and seemed designed ONLY throw off the reader for the revelation to come.

As far as the plot goes (four years ago, Lauren's 16 year old daughter Leslie was kidnapped and the case has yet to be solved), as much as I enjoyed reading again about Tony Mendez, I missed more of Vince and Anne (though it was great to see Haley). Yes, that's a personal want, and more of them wouldn't have served the story. But I also think the difference in this book was there was too much of Lauren's and Leah's viewpoints, and not enough of Tony's and the cop stuff going on. I would rush through the crime solving / police procedural sections, fully involved, loving the way Tony and Hicks and Tanner would mentally work their way through the clues, then we'd come back to Lauren and I'd shut down the Kindle and go to bed.

One last thing. As with the previous installments, I thought the cops focused too much on what technological advances would be coming in the future that they would love to have in their hot little hands now. That just doesn't ring true to me. It would be like me thinking how nice it would be twenty years from now for all kitchens to come equipped with dispensers that automagically measured out quarter teaspoons of salt, or some such. Will something like that exist in the future? Be a standard in all new kitchens (as opposed to any fancy kitchens that might have some similar gadget now)? It just doesn't make sense that I would stand at my stove thinking about that every time I cook. I cook with what I'm given now, just like the cops in this 1990 set thriller should just use what tools they have instead of wishing for tools to come.

Overall, though, the mystery worked for me. I liked very much how it played out in the end. My quibbles are probably more those of an author than a straight reader!

A new year, a new game plan

Because I'm still in the grips of a cold and flu that is lingering for no good reason, I'm not really getting back to work until Thursday. I'm giving these germs until then to have their fun, but that's it. I've got books to write.

In the meantime, here are a couple of posts I've bookmarked the last few months, ideas for increasing productivity I'm anxious to implement (or at least give a try) when my brain is once again my own and not infected.

How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day

There are many fine, successful writers out there who equate writing quickly with being a hack. I firmly disagree. My methods remove the dross, the time spent tooling around lost in your daily writing, not the time spent making plot decisions or word choices. This is not a choice between ruminating on art or churning out the novels for gross commercialism (though I happen to like commercial novels), it's about not wasting your time for whatever sort of novels you want to write.

Quantum Writing Part I

Quantum Writing Part II

With the right amount of planning and prep work, there is actually very little difference between working on one project and working on two or three simultaneously. It does take more time to finish multiple projects (no writer trick in the world can eliminate the actual work involved) but there are many potential benefits, from eradicating boredom and writer's block from your life to becoming a more efficient and productive writer.

New Year's Day must eat foods!

We all have them, foods to bring us good health and good luck and prosperity in the upcoming year. And if you're in the southern part of the United States (and maybe elsewhere) you know black-eyed peas are required January 1st eating. What I didn't know until just sussing it out is that they're way more than a southern US tradition.

The "good luck" traditions of eating black-eyed peas at Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, are recorded in the Babylonian Talmud (compiled ~500 CE)…

Who knew? We have them every New Year's Day with cabbage and usually ham, though sometimes smoked turkey. I LOVE smoked turkey! For Christmas this year, the husband gave me a pressure cooker, so he "cooked" the bone from our Christmas ham and used that broth for the dish below. And oh was it good. It was even better because I didn't have to cook it. I'm now on Day Five of the flu, and I'm going to have abs of steel when this is all said and done from the insane amount of coughing I'm doing. Anyhow, he also made slaw, which covers the cabbage eating part, though I never did eat any of that so there goes my financial prosperity, I guess. I love veggies, but I'm not a fan of collard greens. Love spinach, and have juiced kale, and my good friend Jo Leigh has convinced me to make kale chips, which one of these days … so we always have cabbage. And I did have cornbread and there was pork in the dish, so I should have a good year, though I may be spending it in the poor house. ;)

Here's the recipe from Cooks Country for Hoppin' John. It's a membership recipe site, but this one is currently a freebie so I'll go ahead and post it.

Small boneless hams are available in the meat case at most supermarkets. An equal weight of ham steak can be used. To ensure that the rice cooks evenly, cover the surface with aluminum foil when cooking. Use low-sodium chicken broth or the dish will be too salty. Serve with hot sauce.

INGREDIENTS

6 slices bacon, chopped

1 (1- to 1 1/2-pound) boneless ham, cut into 3/4-inch-thick planks (see note)

1 onion, chopped fine

2 celery ribs, chopped fine

4 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth (see note)

2 (16-ounce) bags frozen black-eyed peas

2 bay leaves

1 1/2cups long-grain rice

3 scallions, sliced thin

INSTRUCTIONS

1. BROWN PORK Cook bacon in Dutch oven over medium heat until crisp, about 8 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer bacon to paper towel-lined plate. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon fat from pot and brown ham, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer to plate with bacon.

2. COOK VEGETABLES Add onion and celery to pot and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and thyme and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add broth, peas, bay leaves, and browned ham and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, until beans are just tender, about 20 minutes. Transfer ham to cutting board and cut into ½-inch pieces.

3. SIMMER RICE Place rice in fine-mesh strainer set over large bowl. Rinse under running water until water runs clear, about 1 minute. Drain rice well and stir into pot. Place square of aluminum foil directly on surface of simmering liquid. Simmer covered until liquid is absorbed and rice is tender, about 20 minutes, stirring and repositioning foil twice during cooking. Remove from heat and let stand, covered, for 10 minutes. Fluff rice with fork. Stir in scallions, bacon, and ham. Serve.

My friend Kim Lenox made a batch, too, and her photo came out a lot better. Probably because she doesn't have the flu. ;/

Happy New Year & John D. MacDonald for 2012

The following is John D. MacDonald's introduction to Stephen King's NIGHT SHIFT.

I am often given the big smiling handshake at parties (which I avoid attending whenever possible) by someone who then, with an air of gleeful conspiracy, will say, 'You know, I've always wanted to write.' I used to try to be polite.

These days I reply with the same jubilant excitement: 'You know, I've always wanted to be a brain surgeon.'

They look puzzled. It doesn't matter. There are a lot of puzzled people wandering around lately.

If you want to write, you write.

The only way to learn to write is by writing. And that would not be a useful approach to brain surgery.

Stephen King always wanted to write and he writes.

So he wrote Carrie and Salem's Lot and The Shining, and the good short stories you can read in this book and a stupendous number of other stories and books and fragments and poems and essays and other unclassifiable things, most of them too wretched to ever publish.

Because that is the way it is done.

Because there is no other way to do it. Not one other way.

Compulsive diligence is almost enough. But not quite. You have to have a taste for words. Gluttony. You have to want to roll in them. You have to read millions of them written by other people.

You read everything with grinding envy or a weary contempt.

You save the most contempt for the people who conceal ineptitude with long words, Germanic sentence structure, obtrusive symbols, and no sense of story, pace, or character.

Then you have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.

Okay, then. Stupendous diligence, plus word-love, plus empathy, and out of that can come, painfully, some objectivity.

Never total objectivity.

At this frangible moment in time I am typing these words on my blue machine, seven lines down from the top of my page two of this introduction, knowing clearly the flavour and meaning I am hunting for, but not at all certain I am getting it.

Having been around twice as long as Stephen King, I have a little more objectivity about my work than he has about his.

It comes so painfully and so slowly.

You send books out into the world and it is very hard to shuck them out of the spirit. They are tangled children, trying to make their way in spite of the handicaps you have imposed on them. I would give a pretty to get them all back home and take one last good swing at every one of them. Page by page. Digging and cleaning, brushing and furbishing. Tidying up.

Stephen King is a far, far better writer at thirty than I was at thirty, or forty.

I am entitled to hate him a little bit for this.

And I think I know of a dozen demons hiding in the bushes where his path leads, and even if I had a way to warn him, it would be no good. He whips them or they whip him.

It is exactly that simple.

Are we all together so far?

Diligence, word-lust, empathy equal growing objectivity and then what?

Story. Story. Dammit, story!

Story is something happening to someone you have been led to care about. It can happen in any dimension – physical, mental, spiritual – and in combinations of those dimensions.

Without author intrusion.

Author intrusion is: 'My God, Mama, look how nice I'm writing!'

Another kind of intrusion is a grotesquerie. Here is one of my favourites, culled from a Big Best Seller of yesteryear: 'His eyes slid down the front of her dress.'

Author intrusion is a phrase so inept the reader suddenly realizes he is reading, and he backs out of the story. He is shocked back out of the story.

Another author intrusion is the mini-lecture embedded in the story. This is one of my most grievous failings.

An image can be neatly done, be unexpected, and not break the spell. In a story in this book called 'Trucks,' Stephen King is writing about a tense scene of waiting in a truck shop, describing the people: 'He was a salesman and he kept his display bag close to him, like a pet dog that had gone to sleep.'

I find that neat.

In another story he demonstrates his good ear, the ring of exactness and truth he can give dialogue. A man and his wife are on a long trip. They are travelling a back road. She says: 'Yes, Burt. I know we're in Nebraska, Burt. But where the hell are we?' He says: 'You've got the road atlas. Look it up. Or can't you read?'

Nice. It looks so simple. Just like brain surgery. The knife has an edge. You hold it so. And cut.

Now at risk of being an iconoclast I will say that I do not give a diddly-whoop what Stephen King chooses as an area in which to write. The fact that he presently enjoys writing in the field of spooks and spells and slitherings in the cellar is to me the least important and useful fact about the man anyone can relate.

There are a lot of slitherings in here, and there is a maddened pressing machine that haunts me, as it will you, and there are enough persuasively evil children to fill Disney World on any Sunday in February, but the main thing is story.

One is led to care.

Note this. Two of the most difficult areas to write in are humour and the occult. In clumsy hands the humour turns to dirge and the occult turns funny.

But once you know how, you can write in any area.

Stephen King is not going to restrict himself to his present field of intense interest.

One of the most resonant and affecting stories in this book is 'The Last Rung on the Ladder.' A gem. Nary a rustle nor breath of other worlds in it.

Final word.

He does not write to please you. He writes to please himself. I write to please myself. When that happens, you will like the work too. These stories pleased Stephen King and they pleased me.

By strange coincidence on the day I write this, Stephen King's novel The Shining and my novel Condominium are both on the Best Seller List. We are not in competition for your attention with each other. We are in competition, I suppose, with the inept and pretentious and sensational books published by household names who have never really bothered to learn their craft.

In so far as story is concerned, and pleasure is concerned, there are not enough Stephen Kings to go around.

If you have read this whole thing, I hope you have plenty of time. You could have been reading the stories.

Today is January 1, 2012. If you write a single page every day this year, come January 1, 2013, you will have written a novel-length book. If you practice compulsive diligence, if you love words, if you have the empathy to be objective, if you avoid author intrusion, if you cause readers to care, then you will have written a story. Go and do.

An end of year freebie!

Follow The Mark

It was not the sort of investigation Logan Burke usually handled. Nowadays he was hired by your average Joe – not sleek, polished corporate players in plush Houston office suites. But it was a straightforward case of industrial espionage with one advantage – a hefty check from ViOPet Chemical Company. All Logan had to do was watch Hannah Evans, a ViOPet employee, and figure out how she was leaking valuable research secrets.

In the six weeks that he spent watching her, Logan began to feel a special bond with Hannah. For the first time in years, he actually considered dumping the case and pursuing the mark. It was not enough to view Hannah across a crowded restaurant or through the lens of a camera. He wanted to breathe her scent. He wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to find the innocence he'd given up on finding in his life again.

Hannah knew someone was following her. She didn't know who he was or why he was there, but his presence was unnerving. It was time to take action, time to let a professional call the shots. She would pay a visit to a private investigator who had come highly recommended – a Mr. Logan Burke.

Until midnight PST on Sunday, January 1, 2012, PLAYING LOVE'S ODDS is FREE at Amazon! Amazon makes this happen, so I'm sorry I can't offer a free version for other readers, but Amazon does offer software to read directly on your PC if you don't have a Kindle! I wasn't happy with the previous covers I'd tried for this one, so had Frauke at Croco Designs make me a new one, and I LOVE it. Before it was published by Meteor Kismet in 1993, scenes from this manuscript won me a WHOLE lot of contests, and the editor bought it six days after submission, so I'll always be proud of this one!