Julia London's Blog, page 12

Fab Food

So recently I acquired my second Le Creuset pan.  Like the first it was on sale.  And unlike the first, I really didn’t need it.  But it was bigger than my first and it was blue (my fav color).  So of course I bought it!  Which of course inspired me to cook something amazing in it.   So after looking through my many cookbooks I came up with the idea of making Osso Buco, braised veal in all it’s fabulousness.

And after reading many variations of the dish, I settled on one from Tyler Florence.  And boy did it deliver.  So today I’m going to share.  And although the list of ingredients seems daunting, I’m here to say, that although it takes a little time to prep, it’s relatively easy to make.  And absolutely divine to eat!

OSSO BUCO MILANESE - Tyler Florence

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup flour

Salt and pepper, to taste

4 pieces veal shank with bone, cut 3 inches thick

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons butter

1 onion, chopped

1/2 cup celery, chopped

1/2 cup carrots, chopped

4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

2 bay leaves

3 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley, finely chopped

1 cup dry Marsala

2 cups veal or chicken stock

2 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped

GREMOLATA:

Grated rind of 1 lemon

Grated rind of 1 orange

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley, chopped

DIRECTIONS:

In a large shallow platter, season flour with salt and pepper. Dredge the veal shanks in the mixture and tap off any excess. In a large heavy skillet or Dutch oven, over medium flame, heat the oil and butter. Sear the shanks on all sides, turn bones on sides to hold in marrow. Add more oil and butter if needed. Remove the browned veal shanks and set aside.

Add onion, celery, carrots, garlic, bay leaves and parsley to the pan and cook until softened. Season with salt and pepper. Raise the heat to high, add the wine and deglaze the pan. Return the shanks to the pan, add the stock and tomatoes, drizzle with olive oil. Reduce the heat to low, cover and cook for about 1 1/2 hours or until the meat is tender. Baste the meat a few times during cooking. Remove the cover, continue to simmer for 10 minutes to reduce the sauce a bit.   Transfer meat and sauce to serving dish.

For gremolata: combine all ingredients together in a small bowl. Strew the gremolata over the osso buco before serving.

What about you?  Are you Food Network obsessed?  Do cookbooks threaten to overtake your kitchen?  Are you a Le Creuset fan?

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S.A.D.

Spent the morning writing, editing, and in the back of my mind, trying to come up with something to blog.

I’ve got nothing. I blame my Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s really bad this year. I think it’s worse every year. From the mayoclinic.com:

Seasonal affective disorder (also called SAD) is a type of depression that occurs at the same time every year. If you’re like most people with seasonal affective disorder, your symptoms start in the fall and may continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody. Less often, seasonal affective disorder causes depression in the spring or early summer.

Treatment for seasonal affective disorder includes light therapy (phototherapy), psychotherapy and medications. Don’t brush off that yearly feeling as simply a case of the “winter blues” or a seasonal funk that you have to tough out on your own. Take steps to keep your mood and motivation steady throughout the year.

Maybe I need to look into some of those treatments. I love the Northeast. Love it. I love all four seasons. I even love the first few snowfalls. But by February, I really start to drag. It doesn’t help that we got 34 inches of snow dumped on us at one time last month, and it still hasn’t melted enough to see encouraging patches of green lawn. Spring is in 16-17 days, and there’s no sign of it here in CT. In fact, we just got an alert that we’re expecting another major snowstorm. Another one! Ayieeee!

Dear Mother Nature, This is NOT SPRING. Please fix. Love, Sherri

The good news is that lack of actual spring isn’t stopping my daughter from coming home for Spring Break on Friday. (Yay! A bright spot). And her boyfriend is going to come visit at the end of that week so that we can finally meet him. She’s 19, in school. He’s 25, out of college, and working for a living– why should that make me nervous? And then, I’m headed to my happy place, Disney World! Accompanying the husband on a conference. Sure I have to work (deadline looms), but what better place to write, and have some fun on the side? Plus, sunshine! Bright happy sunshine! I think that’s what I really need. More sun. Less of this:

Ugh, right? Or do you love snow? Wish you had snow? Never suffered from SAD? Think I should move south?

 

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Whine of Shame

I’m the one who has the daunting task of keeping all these Whine Sisters in line. I send out the emails to say, “Hey, it’s your day, where’s your blog?”

Well, today, I’m pointing the finger at me. You see, sisters? I’m not perfect. So don’t let me pretend otherwise. I slept late, and had to go to the post office, and now I’m hard at work on a thought-provoking, intense new blog post today (yeah, it’s probably going to be about shoes or makeup or something). Stay tuned.

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Weekend Reading: Georgette Heyer

Is there anything better than having to read for work? My editor recently recommended I pick up some Georgette Heyer. Specifically, The Foundling and The Talisman Ring. Ms. Heyer is something of a legend in the romance community, but I’d never read her until last week. I’m enjoying her writing.  

The Foundling:

The Talisman Ring: 

Neither Sir Tristram Shield nor Eustacie, his young French cousin, share the slightest inclination to marry one another. Yet it is Lord Lavenham’s dying wish. For there is no one else to provide for the old man’s granddaughter while Ludovic, his heir, remains a fugitive from justice.

 Have you ever read Heyer? What are you reading now? 


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At The Highlander’s Mercy

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How Many Are Too Many?

  Way back in 2005, when I submitted a proposal for a new book to my editor, I never dreamed that 7 years later I’d still be writing stories connected to that one.  TAMING THE HIGHLANDER was a stand-alone book when I came up with the idea – then called TAMING THE BEAST – and until I turned it in and my editor began editing it, I never even saw the two other characters just screaming for their own tales.

But she did.

The MacLerie Clan series expanded to those three books and then to two more, set almost 500 years later and involving descendants of the original characters in Regency Edinburgh. One, a novella called BLAME IT ON THE MISTLETOE, became my award-winning, RWA RITA-finaling, sweetest-romance-I-ever-wrote story. (I still cry when I read that one!)

So, when my editors asked me to consider another Scottish medieval series, I knew I had to revisit the MacLeries and see how their children would fare when they were of marriageable age. And I knew we would have to meet up with (and DEAL WITH) the parents too. But I was ready to see Connor and Jocelyn, Duncan and Marian and especially Rurik and Margriet again.

A short story reintroduced the Clan to readers and then the new series began. It’s been fun for me to torment the parents with all their sins of the past and to make the young man involved face the ultimate alpha-male, Connor MacLerie (the formidable Beast of the Highlands) in trying to win the heart of the woman they love. Whether father, cousin, laird or earl to them, Connor has been and is still the pivotal character in the entire series.

Now, it looks like there will be a total of 11 inter-connected MacLerie novels, novellas and short stories when I finish writing them!! Wow – eleven!  And BTW – TAMING THE HIGHLANDER has been my most successful, best-selling, most translated book — coming out in about 20 countries and languages including the lovely brand new version above (to the right) from HQN in Spain! The one below to the left is from Germany and the original US cover is at the top! Love the different covers!

But, I wonder – and I want your opinion as a reader on this — is that TOO many about one clan/family/theme? Do you get tired of reading connected series? Or do you love them to continue? I’m getting nervous because I’ve just discovered the history of a clan vs clan feud in medieval Scotland that lasted more than 350 years and my imagination is running wild at the possibilities in that for generations of stories in lots of different locations! LOL!

What do you think?

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Writing that check every month … but it’s worth it!

I did it.  I broke down and hired a cleaning service to come in and do the heavy cleaning once per month.

I’ve tried before, but I was much more of a clutterbug then. (Lately, I’m all about getting rid of sh** … too bad my eleven year old isn’t.  But that’s the topic of another blog.)  The problem in the past was that there was just too much of that pre-cleaning thing going on.  (Gee, I have to move the clutter off the floor so that they can actually sweep and vacuum the floor!) or (Hey! Perhaps I should take all the dishes out of the sink and put them in the dishwasher!) etc. etc.

I’ve actually managed to become less cluttery and keep a reasonably tidy kitchen (in case it’s not painfully clear already, I am not particularly tidy.  I’m not the gross-yuckiness type (with science projects growing in dark corners of the house) but clothes strewn about, papers everywhere, piles of things on the stairs to take up?  Yeah, that’s me.)

Except, as I’ve said, I’ve gotten better.  But that whole scrubbing toilets and cleaning hard water stains and doing the floors REALLY well just did me in.

So I sucked it up and had someone come in for a deep clean … and the house was so awesome I had to have it once/month! (I aspire to once/week … we’ll see!)

It makes me happy, and since they come as a team, they’re super fast!  And for at least a few days (or, really, hours because as soon as C gets home from school, all bets are off) the house is nice and tidy and smells like woodpolish, which is one of the best smells in the world.

It’s not money I want to spend, but it’s worth it.

What’s your “it’s worth it” money-grabber?  A great car? A cleaning person? Regular spa days?

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Jury Duty

This may be random, since I haven’t been called for jury duty in about 3 years, but my buddy Jacquie D did get called recently, so maybe that’s why this topic popped in my head.

You’d think writers were automatically exempt. Seriously, if a judge asks me if I’m using this experience in my next book, I can’t lie, right?

‘Cause you bet your ass I am.

Just one of those writer quirks. Piss me off at the grocery store, make a derogatory comment about my kid or a friend of mine, or ask me with a smirk if I actually write “those” books, you’re likely to get your name printed in twelve languages as The Most Hated Character I Can Think Of in my next story. (First name only. I’m not crazy vengeful.)

Still, my profession does not, as it turns out, preclude me from serving on a jury. (Being a doctor does. I have several neighbors who have M.D. after their names, and they don’t even have to report to the cattle call and beg to be released. They get exempted automatically. So go to medical school if you want to never be part of the jury process.)

As related to justice, writers are apparently regular people. Weird. Cause, you know, we’re…not.

In my profession, eccentric behavior is often excused, if not encouraged. Hemingway, James Joyce, Fitzgerald, etc. We don’t exactly have a great track record. The criminal and civil court of The Great State of South Carolina, however, doesn’t seem to mind. My husband–who’s a furniture manufacturer’s rep–gets called by the FEDERAL court one time. He makes a phone call, explains he’s a sole proprietor, and they excuse him without a blink or courthouse appearance.

Hang on. He’s stable, upstanding and generally reasonable–all the qualities you’d want a jury of your peers to have. My friends who are doctors have those same attributes. They’re all dismissed. Me, who’s often obsessed with people who don’t actually exist, who hears voices of those imaginary people, who takes obscure facts or events and turns them into 70,000-word stories, I’m qualified.

Oh, yeah, there’s a reason justice is an illusive mistress.

As it turned out 3 years ago, I never did get picked for a jury. Not cause I’m a writer, mind you. My step-dad was a cop, bomb squad tech and member of the tactical team for twenty-plus years, so I get booted, since I might be biased toward law enforcement.

Not sure what that says about the judicial process, but there you go.

Anybody have interesting jury duty stories?

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Oscars 2013

Did you watch? Did you at least check out the gowns? So much pretty! Some meh. I must have missed the crazy, but I’ll see if I can find some.

The show itself was a bit safe, considering Seth McFarlane hosted, but he wasn’t a bad host, wasn’t the best (okay and I completely overlooked some of his sexist more offensive lines).  My favorite moments? The opening dance numbers with Charlize Theron, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Daniel Radcliffe.

And Ben Affleck accepting the Argo Best Picture award. He was snubbed in the Best Director category (though he won almost every other major award at other shows for Best Director) and he was appropriately grateful, humble, and gracious, mentioning his first Oscar for screenwriting (Good Will Hunting) and acknowledging a keen awareness of the way his business works.

On to the dresses! Which did you love? Hate? Favorite moments?

One of my favorites!

My husband's favorite. Huh, wonder why.

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Weekend Reading: The American Heiress

Missing your Downton Abbey fix this Sunday?

You could try: The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin

From Goodreads: Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts’, suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot buy everything, as she must decide what is truly worth the price in her life and her marriage.

I picked up The American Heiress because of the Newport setting, actually. I toured Newport RI and, like the author, became fascinated with Consuelo Vanderbilt, who became the Duchess of Marlborough, and her contentious-later-friendly relationship with her domineering mother. Unfortunately, The American Heiress wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped. Entertaining enough, but no Downton Abbey. 

If you really want the intrigue, scandal, and delight of Downton Abbey in a book, preorder Thornbrook Park from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your favorite retailer. It’s out on October 1 (2013, Sourcebooks), just in time to satisfy your Downton fix before the show’s return in January 2014.

 

 

 

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