Kathleen Buckley's Blog, page 10
June 28, 2017
How I Spent (Part of) My Summer Vacation
I had a vitrectomy. I’m not going into the gory details here (Google “vitrectomy” if you want those). Personally, I preferred not to have too clear an idea of what the ophthalmologist planned to do to my left eye. If it had been surgery on my ankle or heart, that would have been different. But thinking about someone messing with your eye … that’s creepy. But the simple answer is, the surgeon takes some fluid out of your eye and puts in something else. No, not a micro-miniature bathysphere or an alien spore. In my case, it was a gas bubble.
The actual procedure was a breeze. I recall being wheeled into surgery (at a hospital, because, terrifyingly, the surgeon wanted to be sure of having "tools that are long enough"--a phrase one does not like to hear applied to one's eye surgery). I noticed I was in a large room with a couple of other medical personnel in it (I could hear their voices). And then I had a drape over my face and Dr. R. said something like,
"Hand me the cat grader"*. The reply was "Not the heron wader*?" "No, the cat grader."
And no, that isn't actually what they said but it was all Greek to me.
*Actually, as everyone who is familiar with the rigging of 18th century British naval vessels knows, the cat grader secures the mizzen mast to the catstick and the heron wader performs the same function for the fore-mast and the twiddle-poop.
At one point I thought of something witty to say ("Are we having fun yet?") but decided it might be a mistake to move my face if he was using a cat grader. It wasn't until I got to the recovery room that I realized that I'd missed five probably rather fraught minutes when I was given two shots to ensure that I didn't feel anything. And I only know about the shots because at the appointment at which Dr. R. scheduled the surgery, he told me there would be two shots and that I would be given something to relax me beforehand. When he said I wouldn’t remember afterward, it was not particularly reassuring. Yeah, yeah, I thought, but I’ll be aware of it at the time.
But there was absolutely no sense of ANYTHING having happened between arriving in the operating room and the moment I found myself admiring black and white geometrical patterns (I’d have said, inside my eyelids except that my eyes must have been open, since Dr. R. was … doing somethingto one of them).
I arrived in recovery and the recovery room nurse said, “Let me take the pillow out from under your knees”.
I said, “Why, however did that get there?” I hadn't understood how thoroughly I wouldn't recall and how efficiently it works.
The procedure was easy. I never had any pain. I’ve had more discomfort from an ingrown toenail.
The ordeal was the week of face-down recovery. Apart from 15 minutes for meals and five minutes an hour to get up and go to the lavatory or simply walk around, you have to be face down. You sleep on your stomach. That was the worst part of the whole thing. I never sleep on my stomach. I’d wake up once or twice or three times a night and have to sit up (face down) for a while, listening to audio books. You’re discouraged from reading, which makes your eyes move too much.
I’d rented recovery equipment, a sort of modified massage chair with a variety of face support and other cushions and a device for supporting my face in bed. It included an angled mirror which would have allowed me to watch TV. However, the TV was in a different room than the massage chair, and moving either one was not an option. Fortunately, I’m not a big TV fan, and I had lots of audio books. I also spent some time thinking deep thoughts: is there an easy way to convert Centigrade to Fahrenheit in your head? What, exactly, is Ottoman silk? Could I use curare as a poison in some future novel set in the 18th century?
If you have to have a vitrectomy, unless you have a live-in Jeeves or Bunter, stock up with food that doesn’t need preparation, apart from a quick heat-up in the microwave. I made a big batch of Irish oatmeal, the steel-cut oats kind, which reheats better than rolled oats oatmeal. Those lunchbox size cups of pudding, Jello, yogurt and apple sauce work well. So do pre-cooked bacon or deli meat, entrees from the freezer case, some of which aren’t bad. Salads (pasta or fruit) from the deli case are a possibility. None of these are things I’d usually ingest; I almost always cook from scratch. But 15 minutes is not a long time to eat even a rather minimal meal; any prep for it should not take more than 2 or 3 minutes. You will not have time to make a salad—or anything else, really—from scratch. Maybe a scrambled egg—but then you’d have the clean up to do. Trust me on this: I have a wonderful roommate, a former R.N., who was extremely helpful. But we don’t eat the same kinds of things on the same schedule. It was just easier to have stuff in the fridge I could zap. She did bring me a gift of chicken tenders, however. They were delicious.
I’m still recovering. The gas bubble will take time to dissipate. The left eye will improve, I hope, but it will take weeks. It’s been a week plus two days, so I’m no longer face-down, and I’ve almost finished weeding out my junk email. I haven’t tried reading yet, except for the labels of the four eye drops I’m using and the occasional news alert online. I’m supposed to take it easy for a while—no hiking, hoicking around heavy loads, going up in airplanes, etc. In a few days, I plan to resume the edit of the first draft of my next historical romance. And that’s how I’m spending my summer.
The actual procedure was a breeze. I recall being wheeled into surgery (at a hospital, because, terrifyingly, the surgeon wanted to be sure of having "tools that are long enough"--a phrase one does not like to hear applied to one's eye surgery). I noticed I was in a large room with a couple of other medical personnel in it (I could hear their voices). And then I had a drape over my face and Dr. R. said something like,
"Hand me the cat grader"*. The reply was "Not the heron wader*?" "No, the cat grader."
And no, that isn't actually what they said but it was all Greek to me.
*Actually, as everyone who is familiar with the rigging of 18th century British naval vessels knows, the cat grader secures the mizzen mast to the catstick and the heron wader performs the same function for the fore-mast and the twiddle-poop.
At one point I thought of something witty to say ("Are we having fun yet?") but decided it might be a mistake to move my face if he was using a cat grader. It wasn't until I got to the recovery room that I realized that I'd missed five probably rather fraught minutes when I was given two shots to ensure that I didn't feel anything. And I only know about the shots because at the appointment at which Dr. R. scheduled the surgery, he told me there would be two shots and that I would be given something to relax me beforehand. When he said I wouldn’t remember afterward, it was not particularly reassuring. Yeah, yeah, I thought, but I’ll be aware of it at the time.
But there was absolutely no sense of ANYTHING having happened between arriving in the operating room and the moment I found myself admiring black and white geometrical patterns (I’d have said, inside my eyelids except that my eyes must have been open, since Dr. R. was … doing somethingto one of them).
I arrived in recovery and the recovery room nurse said, “Let me take the pillow out from under your knees”.
I said, “Why, however did that get there?” I hadn't understood how thoroughly I wouldn't recall and how efficiently it works.
The procedure was easy. I never had any pain. I’ve had more discomfort from an ingrown toenail.
The ordeal was the week of face-down recovery. Apart from 15 minutes for meals and five minutes an hour to get up and go to the lavatory or simply walk around, you have to be face down. You sleep on your stomach. That was the worst part of the whole thing. I never sleep on my stomach. I’d wake up once or twice or three times a night and have to sit up (face down) for a while, listening to audio books. You’re discouraged from reading, which makes your eyes move too much.
I’d rented recovery equipment, a sort of modified massage chair with a variety of face support and other cushions and a device for supporting my face in bed. It included an angled mirror which would have allowed me to watch TV. However, the TV was in a different room than the massage chair, and moving either one was not an option. Fortunately, I’m not a big TV fan, and I had lots of audio books. I also spent some time thinking deep thoughts: is there an easy way to convert Centigrade to Fahrenheit in your head? What, exactly, is Ottoman silk? Could I use curare as a poison in some future novel set in the 18th century?
If you have to have a vitrectomy, unless you have a live-in Jeeves or Bunter, stock up with food that doesn’t need preparation, apart from a quick heat-up in the microwave. I made a big batch of Irish oatmeal, the steel-cut oats kind, which reheats better than rolled oats oatmeal. Those lunchbox size cups of pudding, Jello, yogurt and apple sauce work well. So do pre-cooked bacon or deli meat, entrees from the freezer case, some of which aren’t bad. Salads (pasta or fruit) from the deli case are a possibility. None of these are things I’d usually ingest; I almost always cook from scratch. But 15 minutes is not a long time to eat even a rather minimal meal; any prep for it should not take more than 2 or 3 minutes. You will not have time to make a salad—or anything else, really—from scratch. Maybe a scrambled egg—but then you’d have the clean up to do. Trust me on this: I have a wonderful roommate, a former R.N., who was extremely helpful. But we don’t eat the same kinds of things on the same schedule. It was just easier to have stuff in the fridge I could zap. She did bring me a gift of chicken tenders, however. They were delicious.
I’m still recovering. The gas bubble will take time to dissipate. The left eye will improve, I hope, but it will take weeks. It’s been a week plus two days, so I’m no longer face-down, and I’ve almost finished weeding out my junk email. I haven’t tried reading yet, except for the labels of the four eye drops I’m using and the occasional news alert online. I’m supposed to take it easy for a while—no hiking, hoicking around heavy loads, going up in airplanes, etc. In a few days, I plan to resume the edit of the first draft of my next historical romance. And that’s how I’m spending my summer.
June 27, 2017
Mike Rendell, The Georgian Gentleman: excellent source of Georgian research
The Georgian Gentleman(source of some of my research material) kindly invited me to submit a guest blog. Here’s the link:
http://mikerendell.com/an-unsuitable-...
http://mikerendell.com/an-unsuitable-...
June 5, 2017
A must-read for readers and writers of historical fiction
Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders: A Writer's (and Editor's) Guide to Keeping Historical Fiction Free of Common Anachronisms, Errors, and Myths by Susanne Alleyn
For anyone who enjoys historical fiction, this is a good, fun read. For anyone who writes or wants to write historical fiction, it's a must-read. Nowadays there is no excuse for a writer getting basic historical facts or details of life in one's chosen time period egregiously wrong (an 11th century knight smoking a cigar--one of Alleyn's examples--is as much a sign of bad, careless writing as an inability to write a coherent English sentence). I'm putting it on my list of necessary research materials. And I'll be getting her novels, too.
For anyone who enjoys historical fiction, this is a good, fun read. For anyone who writes or wants to write historical fiction, it's a must-read. Nowadays there is no excuse for a writer getting basic historical facts or details of life in one's chosen time period egregiously wrong (an 11th century knight smoking a cigar--one of Alleyn's examples--is as much a sign of bad, careless writing as an inability to write a coherent English sentence). I'm putting it on my list of necessary research materials. And I'll be getting her novels, too.
May 31, 2017
Today my novel, An Unsuitable Duchess, was featured on PO...
Today my novel, An Unsuitable Duchess, was featured on POTL: All Things Books, Reading and Publishing. This is exciting stuff, as I recall the days before the Internet, when the most thrilling thing I ever encountered was the sight of a book I'd written (pseudonymously) on the rack at the bookstore.
https://princessofthelight.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/an-unsuitable-duchess-by-kathleen-buckley-wildrosepress-historicalromance-books/
POTL (Princess of the Light), the creation of N.N. Light, a husband and wife writing team, features book reviews, writing tips, and promotional services. The latter should be of particular interest to writers who, like me, have little or no experience in promoting their own book.
https://princessofthelight.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/an-unsuitable-duchess-by-kathleen-buckley-wildrosepress-historicalromance-books/
POTL (Princess of the Light), the creation of N.N. Light, a husband and wife writing team, features book reviews, writing tips, and promotional services. The latter should be of particular interest to writers who, like me, have little or no experience in promoting their own book.
May 19, 2017
An Unsuitable Duchess
Back in 2013, when I was writing An Unsuitable Duchess—and only about 17,000 words in—I wrote a post about Time Travel to the Year 1740. An Unsuitable Duchess came out today, May 19, 2017, published by The Wild Rose Press, Inc. at thewildrosepress.com
It’s been a long, peculiar three and a half years.
Things I’ve done that I never expected to:
Received a contract offer 44 days after submitting my query letter. When I first began submitting work (back before home computers, the Internet and cell phones), getting a response from a publisher routinely took six months. Agents? They were often too busy to respond at all.
Had an “author photo” taken. Helpful hint to new authors if you find yourself in the delightful position of needing a photograph but feel you are insufficiently photogenic. Wear large or ridiculous headgear—an exuberant garden party hat, a pith helmet or an “Indiana Jones”-type hat. Holding a cat up is also a good move.
Loved the cover art! Almost exactly what I had envisioned, thanks to RJ Morris of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Bought a DVD of John Rocque’s 1746 map of London and Westminster. This is a treasure for anyone who needs to know the streets, yards and docks of mid-18th century London. A modern map is almost useless—so many streets and landmarks have been destroyed or re-named. You will not find Wych Street or Craven Buildings Yard on a modern map.
Ordered promotional business cards and postcards.
Set up a Facebook page for my book: https://www.facebook.com/anunsuitableduchess/
And yes, in spite of a bad case of nerves, I’m thrilled.
It’s been a long, peculiar three and a half years.
Things I’ve done that I never expected to:
Received a contract offer 44 days after submitting my query letter. When I first began submitting work (back before home computers, the Internet and cell phones), getting a response from a publisher routinely took six months. Agents? They were often too busy to respond at all.
Had an “author photo” taken. Helpful hint to new authors if you find yourself in the delightful position of needing a photograph but feel you are insufficiently photogenic. Wear large or ridiculous headgear—an exuberant garden party hat, a pith helmet or an “Indiana Jones”-type hat. Holding a cat up is also a good move.Loved the cover art! Almost exactly what I had envisioned, thanks to RJ Morris of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Bought a DVD of John Rocque’s 1746 map of London and Westminster. This is a treasure for anyone who needs to know the streets, yards and docks of mid-18th century London. A modern map is almost useless—so many streets and landmarks have been destroyed or re-named. You will not find Wych Street or Craven Buildings Yard on a modern map.
Ordered promotional business cards and postcards.
Set up a Facebook page for my book: https://www.facebook.com/anunsuitableduchess/
And yes, in spite of a bad case of nerves, I’m thrilled.
October 21, 2016
If I Were a Mobster
"If I were a mobster. . . "You're kidding, right? Oh, like an interview.
Hi. My name is Jerry Howarth. Do not call me Jerome. I don’t like it.
My boss? I am the boss. I got my own little mob. Loansharking, collections, vice, mostly. Small stuff, but it pays.
Seattle, Washington is my turf. I grew up there. It’s not all Microsoft and techies.
What's my look? Are you pulling my chain? Sport shirt, chinos, a sport coat for dress up. Although my Emma picks them now. Sometimes she makes me wear a suit.
The last time I needed a gun, I used a Bersa Thunder .380. I don’t carry usually—don’t need to. I’ve got guys for that. Besides, if the cops pull me over, they hassle me if I’m carrying.
I like a car that’s not going to be pulled over every time I drive it, so no red Corvette. Something like ordinary folks drive. A Toyota, a Chrysler, a Subaru. Something like that, in gray or white. With enough room for shoulders and long legs. Enough cargo space. I shop at Costco more than I do car chases.
What I’m known for depends on who you ask. Cop circles, I’m famous for never having been tried for anything. My friends would probably say, Emma.
I don’t have a catch phrase, if you mean something like Make it so. Maybe Huh. . . disorganized crime.
Sure, I got hobbies. Movie classics like Casablanca and Seven Samurai. A boat that sucks up money. Rye whiskey. Sometimes I like to read, a habit I picked up from Emma. She likes romance. I go for stories about guys like me, like 30 Seconds Before .
30 SECONDS BEFORE BLURB:
Blake Herro is a cop in the Cleveland Police Force. Ever since he was a child he wanted to do right by the city he loved by cleaning up the streets and protecting its citizens. Red, a notorious mobster, has other plans.
On a bitter December night, ten police officers are drawn into a trap and killed by Red’s followers. Blake wants to bring down the Mob to avenge his fallen brothers and to prevent other cops from being murdered. Except the only way he can do that is by infiltrating the Mob.
Every minute he’s with these mobsters he’s in danger. Around every corner lies the threat of coming face to face with a gun. Will he make it out of the Mob alive or will he be their next victim?
BUY LINKS:Amazon US / Amazon UK / Amazon CANOOK / KOBO / The Wild Rose Press
To celebrate, 30 Seconds, the follow up story, is on sale for 99 cents!
Sale Oct. 21st – Nov. 4th
SALE LINKS:Amazon / The Wild Rose Press / NOOK / KOBO
BIO: Chrys Fey is the author of the Disaster Crimes Series (Hurricane Crimes and Seismic Crimes), as well as these releases from The Wild Rose Press: 30 Seconds, Ghost of Death, and Witch of Death. Website / Blog / Facebook / Twitter
Now please hop around to the other participants:
https://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=272500"
October 14, 2016
What a writer does . . .
Some of you know that my first historical romance novel, An Unsuitable Duchess, was recently accepted by The Wild Rose Press.
After completing it, I started on another romance, also set in the mid-18th century, because there’s no point in waiting to hear if something you’ve written is accepted. Better to keep writing. It takes your mind off. I’m about halfway through my current project (working title, Cargo of Muskets) but suspended work to do the first edit on Duchess, fill out the paperwork for the blurb, suggestions for cover art, and the like.
I thought, while it’s in process, I’d take a look at two earlier novels which never went anyplace, and see if I could do something with them. One was . . . well, I don’t know what you’d call it. Getting By was the story of a dumpster-diving young loner and how he turned out with a little help from friends. No agent wanted to handle it so I eventually published it on Smashwords. I finished the second, Career Criminal, and wasn’t quite happy with it. It had funny moments, some screwball romance, action . . . but it didn’t quite come together. Or I thought it didn’t. A preliminary glance a few days ago made me wonder if I’d been mistaken.
So I have plenty of writing-related things to do. What am I doing instead? Why, helping to plan an Italian Renaissance feast for 150. Doesn’t everyone?
The menu is set. That was the easy part.
The hard part is converting a recipe for 6 to 8 people to one for 150. If the ingredients are given in pounds or cups, it’s not bad but how many apples do you need for a quart of sliced apples? But if I can find the drill for loading a Model 1717 Charleville musket on Google, I can find a cook’s site, or an apple producer’s site or a catering site with a quantity conversion chart.
At about 10 p.m. on November 5, the feast will be over and cleanup complete. Then I’m going to get a good long night’s sleep. Then, after de-compressing for a couple of days, I’ll pick up Cargo of Muskets again. Because writing is an addiction for some of us, and we write whether we get published or not, no matter what else we may be doing: holding down a full-time job, remodeling the house, or planning a bake sale or banquet. And even if we stop temporarily because we've had no success, or we're overwhelmed by a family crisis or crazy work schedule, at the back of our minds, we're still thinking about writing.
Thinking, That abandoned mink jacket could be the clue in a murder mystery. Or If you were on the run from the mob, how would you disappear? Because writing, and thinking about writing, and yes, occasionally reading, is what we do.
After completing it, I started on another romance, also set in the mid-18th century, because there’s no point in waiting to hear if something you’ve written is accepted. Better to keep writing. It takes your mind off. I’m about halfway through my current project (working title, Cargo of Muskets) but suspended work to do the first edit on Duchess, fill out the paperwork for the blurb, suggestions for cover art, and the like.
I thought, while it’s in process, I’d take a look at two earlier novels which never went anyplace, and see if I could do something with them. One was . . . well, I don’t know what you’d call it. Getting By was the story of a dumpster-diving young loner and how he turned out with a little help from friends. No agent wanted to handle it so I eventually published it on Smashwords. I finished the second, Career Criminal, and wasn’t quite happy with it. It had funny moments, some screwball romance, action . . . but it didn’t quite come together. Or I thought it didn’t. A preliminary glance a few days ago made me wonder if I’d been mistaken.
So I have plenty of writing-related things to do. What am I doing instead? Why, helping to plan an Italian Renaissance feast for 150. Doesn’t everyone?
The menu is set. That was the easy part.
The hard part is converting a recipe for 6 to 8 people to one for 150. If the ingredients are given in pounds or cups, it’s not bad but how many apples do you need for a quart of sliced apples? But if I can find the drill for loading a Model 1717 Charleville musket on Google, I can find a cook’s site, or an apple producer’s site or a catering site with a quantity conversion chart.
At about 10 p.m. on November 5, the feast will be over and cleanup complete. Then I’m going to get a good long night’s sleep. Then, after de-compressing for a couple of days, I’ll pick up Cargo of Muskets again. Because writing is an addiction for some of us, and we write whether we get published or not, no matter what else we may be doing: holding down a full-time job, remodeling the house, or planning a bake sale or banquet. And even if we stop temporarily because we've had no success, or we're overwhelmed by a family crisis or crazy work schedule, at the back of our minds, we're still thinking about writing.
Thinking, That abandoned mink jacket could be the clue in a murder mystery. Or If you were on the run from the mob, how would you disappear? Because writing, and thinking about writing, and yes, occasionally reading, is what we do.
October 24, 2013
Time travel to the year 1740 . . .
I haven't posted recently because I've been spending substantial time in 1740. After getting past the initial dip (in which I wondered where the story was going, and what was going to happen to it upon arrival), the characters took over and now the novel is flowing. I've been fond of that particular year ever since college, when I wrote a paper on happenings in that year, in relation to the novel Pamela. However, it's a great deal easier to do research now. When I think of the time I spent in the basement of the University of Washington library, reviewing microfilmed English newspapers of the time, it seems like a bad dream. Nowadays, I Google for almost anything I need to know (i.e., what year did the term "bluestocking" come into use? What was a horse-drawn "for hire" vehicle called?); although I have several 18th century cookbook reprints to consult for food, and various websites cover the question of clothing. Then there are the weird and wonderful "print on demand" reprints of really obscure 18th century books. All of these are useful not only for background, but to remind me how different life was 250 years ago, a fact it's all too easy to overlook, when most of us have difficulty remembering life before computers and Internet. Some can't recall life before cell phones.
Authenticity is important to me, when I read a historical novel. Does it matter in the greater scheme of things? Maybe not, but I usually stop reading novels with egregious errors. When I write one, I stop frequently to ask myself questions like, If you're in a corridor lighted by occasional candle sconces, how dim will it be? Can you look up at the man confronting you and see his whole face clearly? Or, more likely, only the half that's toward the nearest sconce? And I had to come up with a new plot twist when I realized that baptismal certificates were not yet in use (and if anyone out there knows otherwise, please let me know!). Baptisms were recorded in the parish register. Most people did not move from where they'd been born, or at least not far.
How much has life changed since 1740? More than even I imagined. You could be hanged for stealing something worth 40 shillings (an English pound was 20 shillings). As late as 1752, a woman was burned at the stake for poisoning her husband, and hanging, drawing and quartering was the punishment meted out to male traitors. If you needed to contact someone, you didn't "reach out and touch" them, as the phone company ad used to suggest. You wrote. In longhand, with a quill pen and ink from a bottle, then shook sand over it to blot the excess ink. When they received the letter, they had to pay for it (unless you could get a relative or friend who was a peer to "frank" it by writing his name across the outside. The letter was folded, not put in an envelope.
Does checking on issues of fact take a lot of time and slow down the writing? Not as much as you might think, thanks to the Internet. I'm about 37,000 words in and still hope to include a duel, a murder, an abduction and a terrifyingly high stakes game of cards. But it all depends on what the characters want to do.
Authenticity is important to me, when I read a historical novel. Does it matter in the greater scheme of things? Maybe not, but I usually stop reading novels with egregious errors. When I write one, I stop frequently to ask myself questions like, If you're in a corridor lighted by occasional candle sconces, how dim will it be? Can you look up at the man confronting you and see his whole face clearly? Or, more likely, only the half that's toward the nearest sconce? And I had to come up with a new plot twist when I realized that baptismal certificates were not yet in use (and if anyone out there knows otherwise, please let me know!). Baptisms were recorded in the parish register. Most people did not move from where they'd been born, or at least not far.
How much has life changed since 1740? More than even I imagined. You could be hanged for stealing something worth 40 shillings (an English pound was 20 shillings). As late as 1752, a woman was burned at the stake for poisoning her husband, and hanging, drawing and quartering was the punishment meted out to male traitors. If you needed to contact someone, you didn't "reach out and touch" them, as the phone company ad used to suggest. You wrote. In longhand, with a quill pen and ink from a bottle, then shook sand over it to blot the excess ink. When they received the letter, they had to pay for it (unless you could get a relative or friend who was a peer to "frank" it by writing his name across the outside. The letter was folded, not put in an envelope.
Does checking on issues of fact take a lot of time and slow down the writing? Not as much as you might think, thanks to the Internet. I'm about 37,000 words in and still hope to include a duel, a murder, an abduction and a terrifyingly high stakes game of cards. But it all depends on what the characters want to do.
August 14, 2013
Waiting for the Chile Roaster
This morning when I glanced at the grocery store ads, I saw that my local store had 30 pound bags of Hatch green chiles (yes, in New Mexico, hot peppers are spelled the Spanish way, chile rather than chili) for $14.88 including roasting. Naturally, I reorganized my day's priorities to include getting my year's supply of Hatch chiles. Five minutes to buy them, about an hour or an hour and a half waiting to have them roasted in the grocery store parking lot and then some time at home packing them into freezer bags.
It actually only takes a few minutes to roast them in the rotating steel grated barrel over a line of propane flames, but there were half-a-dozen people in front of me , and some had two or three bags. But time spent in line waiting for the chile roaster is never time wasted. Quite often the person in front of me or behind me is Hispano, with roots here that go back to before the U.S. acquired New Mexico in 1850 (more or less--the Gadsden Purchase was in 1853), or even back to the earliest Spanish settlement of the area, before 1600. And that's assuming none of their ancestors were Indians who had settled here a long, long time ago. New Mexico has a lot of prehistory. So while waiting in Hatch chile-scented air, I've learned that while some people take their chiles home and peel the charred skin off before canning or freezing, some don't. I belong to the latter group. The first year, I tried to peel them and while some of the skin would slip off nicely, some of it . . . wouldn't. It took a long time. The next I stopped worrying about it. Some skin comes off as you handle them, and what remains adds to the flavor, in my opinion.
Sometimes we've talked about bizcochitos, the state cookie. Say what you will about the benefits of a low-fat diet, bizcochitos need lard. Not to use lard in them would be like trying to make pastrami out of tofu. Anise is often considered vital, too, and brandy (or brandy flavoring). Mine use both (I found the recipe in a recipe file at an estate sale; its late owner appeared to be a very good cook).
Once I talked to someone about making tamales for Christmas Eve. That was a little discouraging. I'd found bags of pre-mixed masa dough at a supermarket and gleefully made a filling from a reasonably authentic recipe. When I mentioned the supermarket masa dough, she closed her eyes and turned pale. She made her dough from scratch. Embarrassing.
It actually only takes a few minutes to roast them in the rotating steel grated barrel over a line of propane flames, but there were half-a-dozen people in front of me , and some had two or three bags. But time spent in line waiting for the chile roaster is never time wasted. Quite often the person in front of me or behind me is Hispano, with roots here that go back to before the U.S. acquired New Mexico in 1850 (more or less--the Gadsden Purchase was in 1853), or even back to the earliest Spanish settlement of the area, before 1600. And that's assuming none of their ancestors were Indians who had settled here a long, long time ago. New Mexico has a lot of prehistory. So while waiting in Hatch chile-scented air, I've learned that while some people take their chiles home and peel the charred skin off before canning or freezing, some don't. I belong to the latter group. The first year, I tried to peel them and while some of the skin would slip off nicely, some of it . . . wouldn't. It took a long time. The next I stopped worrying about it. Some skin comes off as you handle them, and what remains adds to the flavor, in my opinion.
Sometimes we've talked about bizcochitos, the state cookie. Say what you will about the benefits of a low-fat diet, bizcochitos need lard. Not to use lard in them would be like trying to make pastrami out of tofu. Anise is often considered vital, too, and brandy (or brandy flavoring). Mine use both (I found the recipe in a recipe file at an estate sale; its late owner appeared to be a very good cook).
Once I talked to someone about making tamales for Christmas Eve. That was a little discouraging. I'd found bags of pre-mixed masa dough at a supermarket and gleefully made a filling from a reasonably authentic recipe. When I mentioned the supermarket masa dough, she closed her eyes and turned pale. She made her dough from scratch. Embarrassing.
