Camy Tang's Blog, page 118

Mohair cowl

I finished this cowl made with a mohair/acrylic yarn in a cable design. The yarn is Patons Divine and the cable design is from LionBrand.com. You can see the project details on Ravelry (you don't have to belong to Ravelry to see this project page):



http://ravel.me/camytang/mcc



Hopefully this will keep me warm when winter comes, although it's been so hot lately that I felt rather stupid to be knitting mohair when it's 80 degrees outside. :P



Any yarn projects you've been working on?

Pictures of Bath from my London trip

I posted some pictures I took of my day trip to Bath! Click the link to see my photo album on Facebook. You don't need a Facebook account to see the pictures.

Trip to England!

Hey peeps! This week, I am headed to England for my 40th birthday! I didn’t want a party, instead I wanted a dream vacation, so I’m headed to London to meet my friend and author Shelley Adina/Adina Senft, who will be flying there from her trip in Europe. We’ll spend some time in London together before she heads back to the States and I stay in England for another few days with my friends and authors Liz Babbs and Penny Culliford (separately, not together, although we’ll probably spend time together all three of us!) I’m also hoping to meet up for coffee with some other writer friends who live near London.



Please pray for a safe journey for me! This is my first time traveling internationally in a long time and I’m not really looking forward to the long plane ride to London.

The frustration of being sidelined

For the past four days, I’ve had a low-grade headache just kind of hovering behind my forehead, but yesterday it exploded into a full-flown migraine. It was awful. My head was pounding too much for me to be able to sleep it off, and my stomach was upset so I couldn’t take any medication.



Luckily, I had taken a couple Tylenol and willow bark with some soymilk before my stomach rebelled, so I wasn’t totally without drugs. The only thing I could do was lie in bed with the windows darkened and a cold compress on my head and eyes. However, the pain was too much and I couldn’t sleep, but it was also heartily boring lying in bed in pain, so I put on an audiobook and listened to that in the dark. I went through three cold compresses before the headache died down.



Even after I got up, I still had a low-grade headache and my head felt fragile, like glass. I tried doing work and couldn’t--I was in too much pain, and I was afraid that looking at the computer screen was making my headache get worse again, so I stopped.



But I was so frustrated because I have so much work to do! I’m working on blurbs for my Love Inspired Suspense editor, which I should have had done a couple weeks ago, but some personal problems kept me from working on them sooner. I also need to be working on a manuscript due October 15th.



I am also taking an online history class, my first academic class in years. Originally, I would have had my manuscript done before the class started, but the manuscript deadline was extended because my synopsis wasn’t approved earlier, so the deadline is now October 15th, and so I have the class at the same time as the manuscript writing.



Perhaps my migraine was triggered by the stress of the past month. I had some personal problems and excessive stress about the amount of work that piled up.



I’d had such a nice, neat schedule for myself that got completely sidelined. Deadlines were changed, extra work piled up, unanticipated problems arose. Now my online class time is packed with two other projects that were supposed to be finished before the class started.



I am feeling better today, although I still have a low-grade headache. However, I am not tired and feel full of energy--my head just feels a little fragile from the pounding it took yesterday.



Please pray for me that I can get all my work done. I need God’s help to not only get it done, but also to not be frustrated by all the problems I’ve had. Thanks, guys!

Who’s reading Young Adult novels?

I was on the Girls, God, and the Good Life blog yesterday with a link to a very interesting article and an unofficial poll:



Camy here! I came across this article in Publisher’s Weekly today about a study that showed 55% of YA Books are bought by adults. I thought that was interesting, although not really surprising.



Click here to read the rest of my blog post and join the discussion! What do you think about the results of this study?

Love Inspired chat right now!

From 8-10pm EST. I hope you’ll join us! No need for a password.



http://chat.eharlequin.com/flashchat.php#

Love Inspired chat tonight!

From 8-10pm EST. I hope you’ll join us! No need for a password.

Love Inspired Harvest Festival at Harlequin.com

This week is the Love Inspired Harvest Festival at Harlequin.com forum boards! Games and prizes and authors dropping by to chat! Come join us! If you’re not yet a member of the Harlequin forum boards, it’s super easy to sign up! If you have problems, just message me or Love Inspired Books on Facebook for help!



http://community.harlequin.com/showthread.php/609-Love-Inspired-Spotlight-Love-Inspired-Harvest-Festival

Savory Steel Cut Oats with Spring Vegetables in the rice cooker

This all started because I made vegetable risotto in my rice cooker, although I added more veggies than the recipe indicated, which added more water to it, which made the rice mushy.



Several months ago, I tried making a savory steel cut oats recipe from The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, but didn’t much care for it because it had too much honey in the recipe, and I didn’t like the taste of the olive oil, steel cut oats, and honey together. But I liked the texture of the steel cut oats, so I decided to combine the veggie risotta and steel cut oats recipe.



I did a combination of the risotto recipe from the cookbook and the savory steel cut oatmeal recipe. Here it is:



Savory Steel Cut Oats with Spring Vegetables in the rice cooker



1 tablespoon butter

1 minced garlic clove

1/2 diced onion

1 cup chopped leafy greens--I used kale, you could also use spinach, chard, beet greens instead

1-2 small carrots, finely diced, or 1 large carrot finely diced

1-2 small summer squash or zucchini, finely diced

1-2 small tomatoes, diced

(Note: You can pretty much add any veggies you like, although I’d suggest you chop them up well so they’ll cook thoroughly. If you like them more crunchy, you may want to chop them less fine and see if that gives them a harder texture, but I haven’t tried that.)

1 1/2 cups chicken broth

1 cup steel cut oats

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cumin (I actually used more than a 1/2 teaspoon, I just kind of shook it in)

Dash of cayenne pepper



I threw the butter, garlic, and onions in the rice cooker and hit the start button, then closed the lid and let it cook while I cut up all the veggies.



Then I added all the veggies, gave it a good stir, and added the rest of the ingredients. I stirred it all and reset the rice cooker. I put it on the regular rice setting.



After cooking, I stirred it again and then covered it and let it steam for 10 minutes before eating.





It ended up needing a little more salt for my taste, but for those of you who don’t want too much salt in your diet, you can omit the salt entirely.



I thought it tasted pretty good. It had a texture similar to rice or risotto in that it was sticky, but it had that nice steel cut oats texture. The veggies and spices made it a good savory side dish, although I ended up eating it for breakfast.



It had a slightly Southwestern flavor to it. I think adding corn kernels would have been tasty. If you don’t like that style, you could probably omit the tomatoes and switch the cumin to something else to make it less Southwestern.



I would definitely make this again. I rather like eating savory steel cut oats for breakfast, and this ensures I get some veggies with breakfast. I might try adding cheese into it before eating next time.



If you want to buy The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, links are below. Despite not liking their savory steel cut oats recipe, I’ve really loved this cookbook. So many of the recipes are fantastic and I love being able to cook so many things in my rice cooker. It’s incredibly convenient.



Amazon: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook

Kindle version: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook

Barnes and Noble: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook

Nook version: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook

BooksaMillion: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook

Kobobooks: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook

Review: A London Season

A London Season by Joan Wolf

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Completely enjoyed this story written in the old fashioned style. Characters are likable and conflict is adequate. Ending is predictable but satisfying.



View all my reviews