Hanne Blank's Blog, page 11

It's Book Day!

It's Big Big Love goes on sale day!

 

With its gorgeous cover photo by Molly Bennett of Fat Bottom Boudoir photography, its stellar illustrations by the extraordinary Liz Tamny, interviews with brilliant and badassed  people like Lesley Kinzel and Golda Poretsky and Substantia Jones and Dr. Sheila Addison and Yohannon… and its amazing, revealing, beautiful, funny, sassy, wise, insightful comments on everything under the sun from all of you wonderful people who took the survey for the book, Big Big Love is truly the sum of its parts, because its parts are, frankly, freakin' amazing.

The book presents a lot of the same ideas as the first edition published in 2000, but this is not the same book.  It is rewritten from the ground up, updated, reorganized and restructured in many ways, and presents a lot of new stuff as well.

One of the real joys of doing a new Big Big Love was that I got to go back to the old book and think about all the stuff I'd noticed over the span of a decade and thought "Gee, I wish I'd done such-and-so instead," or that I'd wished I'd done differently, or things that readers had pointed out I had omitted or could've handled better.  It's not every day life actually hands you the opportunity for a do-over, so I tried to really take advantage of the opportunity.

Of course, I hope you'll buy a copy!

(Actually, given the stories I have heard from so many people about what happened to their copies of the first edition, I recommend that you buy two.  One of them you won't loan out, because you might not get it back.)

When you do, I hope you'll buy from an independent bookstore.  I know this is where a lot of authors just link to Amazon, but you all know how to find that if you really want it, and I really feel passionately about encouraging people to buy independent instead.  So — please go find your local on Indiebound.

If you want to buy online, I highly recommend the awesomeness that is my own local indie bookstore, the zesty and wondrous Atomic Books.

Ebook formats are also available — Kindle, iBooks, Sony Reader, etc. — just click on the ebooks link.

And there will be book events!  Baltimore, Philly, New York City, Boston, Atlanta… check it out.

And I'm going to once again do my part in terms of making sure y'all get your books… it's time for my Book Day Giveaway!   And this time I'm giving out two books instead of one.

How to enter:  before 5 PM Eastern Standard Time on the 21st (tomorrow), leave a comment below, 100 words or less, in which you detail a completely made-up, fictitious anecdote for my imaginary biography.

Tell me about the time I dug a tunnel under the prison wall only to end up in a septic tank.  Or the time we got stuck in traffic and ended up having a dance party in the bed of the pickup truck stuck in the lane next to us.  Or that time we were trying to earn money busking so we could finally get a ticket out of that backwater spaceport and get back to Alpha Centauri, but the only song we knew all the words to was "Stairway to Heaven"… well, okay, so that one's not fiction.

You get the idea.

Best two win books.

                                      

Big Big Tomorrow!

Tomorrow's the big day!  The new, improved, more delicious in every way Big Big Love officially goes on sale tomorrow!

This link will take you to the Random House page for the book, which provides you with ordering information as well as links to all the various ebook formats available.

This link, on the other hand, will take you to the order page for Big Big Love at Atomic Books, my neighborhood indie bookstore and one of my favorite bookstores anywhere.  If you want to order your hard copy of the book online, I very much encourage you to get it from Atomic Books.  Tell Benn and Rachel I sent you.

As for the book giveaway from the 15th, the winnah is Steven S., because I have not been able to get the "when I find myself in tons of tribbles" earworm out of my head since I read it.  Maybe sending you a book will help!  This is what I get for asking for filk… so send me your address, Steven!

                                      

Oh my goodness, it's another Big Big Love giveaway!

Why, just look at the time!  Only five more days until Big Big Love 2.0 is unleashed upon an unsuspecting — okay, maybe somewhat suspecting — world.

Are you excited?  I am.

And because it's the 15th and I said I was gonna give away another book on the 15th, here I am, giving away another book.

I had so much fun last time with the Names for Bands thing that this time, I'm offering a book to whoever posts the best filked song lyric — at least one stanza plus the chorus — in the comments here at the blog before 5 pm tomorrow (September 16, 2011).

The rules are two:

you have to post filked (alternative, made-up, perhaps parodic) lyrics to at least one stanza of the song plus the entirety of the chorus
you have to link to an audio or video file of the original song in case I don't know it, because it's hard to assess how good the filk really is unless you know the original

I can't wait to see what you come up with!

                                      

Mrs. Avoirdupois Explains it All for You: The Strategics of Self-Acceptance

Darlings, I must apologize for my execrable failure to comply with the one piddling bit of scheduling I have got for this guest spot on Miss Hanne's lovely blog.  I'd tell you all the tedious reasons that this post wasn't ready for you all yesterday on Tuesday the Eenth as it was meant to be, but that'd be tedious and tedium, my pets, is simply not what the doctor ordered for the marvelous likes of my Chubbelinas.  So let us take it as writ that I am positively prostrate with contrition and that I shall do my utmost to make sure that this doesn't happen again, and move along, shall we?  Wonderful.

Each fall as we begin a new year here at Miss Hanne's Academy for Wayward Girls, our new crop of Plumplings discovers that we at the Academy have a somewhat different approach to things than that to which they may be accustomed.  At Miss Hanne's, we strive to live up to our motto, the fine Ciceronian phrase "alterius qui non sit suus esse potesti" — let no one be another's who can be his own – and to teach our girls to do the same.

 

 

 

One part of this that I stress in my classroom is the effort we all must make to present ourselves to the world in such a way that we, and not others, retain a maximum of control and flexibility in terms of our own image and reputation.

At Miss Hanne's, we do not accomplish this, as others often do, by cowering fearfully in the face of what others might think.  If we are to be our own people, it will simply not do to let others control us with the puppet-strings of intimidation.

How, then, to negotiate the fact that the world of other people is, alas, not always the benign and loving place we would like it to be?  How shall we conduct ourselves so that we go through life already well defended against those whom we meet who are not always ready to act with compassion and loving kindness, to put others first,  to forgive easily, to embody  the sturdy virtue of tolerance, or even to hold a door for someone whose hands are full?

Most importantly, how do we accomplish this without feeling as if we have hamstrung ourselves in one way or another?  It is no good to have a sterling reputation if the task of keeping it makes us feel as if we have painted ourselves into a corner.  It is worse than useless if we have achieved whatever control we have over our own image by means of such superhuman over-control and preposterous glossiness that people begin watching hawkishly — as we so often see the media do with those whom it raises up for the pleasure of destroying them later — so that they may pounce viciously upon the first sign of human frailty.

No, no, this will never do.  If we are to be ourselves we must be capable at all times of being human.  And if we are not to belong to others, we must have some sense of strategy with regard to remaining our best selves and our own selves.

I concede, Plumplings, that this a not a simple task.   But fear not.  You are destined for the task, and you are more than equal to it.

Part of how you will achieve this great work is through the expedient and extremely useful medium of self-acceptance.

The soignee and determined Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is reputed to have said some years ago, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."  This is a sweeping statement, and one with which one might perhaps take legitimate issue — other people surely can be sufficiently ghastly that one feels all sorts of things one would rather not — and yet it contains a kernel of truth upon which one can build an empire.

To wit:

The more you are able to accept yourself as you are, including whatever faults you have or merely believe others might perceive you to possess, the less others' perceptions of you are likely to represent magnetic fields which can force the needle of your life's compass to swing to and fro.

If you are plain rather than pretty, for instance, and you accept your plainness, then you need not spend much time or energy worrying about trying to be physically unplain.  You can accept that prettiness is largely an accident of birth, and nothing much to do with the actual person, but that being an interesting and dynamic and productive human being who is a joy to behold by virtue of being who they are is an achievement that speaks volumes about an individual.

To be sure, even the sturdiest soul might have — and Plumplings, I do not mind admitting that I myself have done this — the occasional wistful moment of thinking "Ah, if only I had been born lovely instead of brilliant!"

Yet this cannot trouble a self-accepting soul for long, for at the core of self-acceptance is the realization that what exists is already sufficient and good.  Before long, off you toddle, still plain perhaps, but when push comes to shove, none the worse off for being who you are… and since who one is is all one has to work with in any case, one may as well allow that who one is is actually fairly fabulous and has its own particular array of benefits, no matter how odd or even unsatisfying they may sometimes seem in the wacky little hall-of-mirrors inside one's own complicated little head.

This is all the more important because of what it allows you to do in your interactions with others.  The bad you do to yourself is the exact measure of the evil you will allow others to do to you.  To act or speak with public self-hatred is to hand others live ammunition with which they may, at their whim, manipulate you, force you to react to them, and make you miserable.

Why, Plumplings, would a person do this?  As you have no doubt learned in your time on this earth, people are perfectly capable of coming up with ways to be repulsively nasty to you without any assistance whatsoever.  Why in Heaven's name would you consider doing this repugnant job for them?

It is madness, darlings, sheerest madness.  Moreover, it is rude.  We learn early on that we ought not speak ill of others, particularly not those who are unable to defend themselves.  We know full well that a mouthful of venom spewed into a room chills even the warmest of conversations and makes tense and wary those who had been relishing the relaxing reassurance of companionship.  What we must learn is that it is no less so when the only person into whom we sink our slanderous fangs is ourself.

As I tell my pupils: if you wouldn't allow someone else to say it about your best friend, you shouldn't allow yourself to say it about you.

This applies doubly when the self-loathing is disguised as a sociable ritual.  Modern culture here in America has developed a lamentable tendency to encourage — particularly among women, who must of course be kept in their place if misogyny is to continue to rule the day as it has for so long — the recitation of litanies of putative sins as a form of social bonding.

I know you are familiar with this.  Let me give an example of a typical conversation, based on one I overheard not too long ago:

"Oh, I'm just so lazy and disgusting," one begins, "I hadn't even lost the five pounds I gained on vacation and here I am, telling myself it's okay if I skip Hot Yoga again so I can go to Estelle's birthday party and eat cake!"

"Oh, I know what you mean, Gladys," says another.  "I swear I have Seafood Disease.  I see food, and I eat it! It's just terrible.  And I hardly exercise at all, these days, I'm just such a wimp about the hot weather I stay home in the air conditioning like a big fat lump!"

This friendly chat is, in reality, not merely a fiesta of self-flagellation that would make a Carthusian blush, it is also a veritable police state's worth of nasty, punitive insults, threats, and behavior policing.  It is an all too typical pas de deux of self-loathing one-downswomanship, a shameful display of absent gratitude and the inability to resist the deeply ingrained teaching that women should never be allowed to feel good about themselves.  And should either Gladys or her friend be so inclined later on, they have pockets full of ammunition with which to be cruel to one another… or behind each other's backs.

Let us allow ourselves to imagine how this conversation might've sounded were Gladys and her friend more self-accepting, more gracious, and less ready to offer up steaming heaps of self-loathing as penance for the sin of being female and having bodies.

"I'm playing hookey from yoga class tonight," Gladys might begin, with a gleeful grin.  "Do you remember Estelle?  She's having a birthday party.  I lead a charmed life — we just got back from a vacation where we ate like kings, and now I get to go eat cake instead of sweating half to death while I try to wrap my ankles around my ears."

"Estelle from the food co-op?" her friend might reply.  "Yes, I remember her.  Be sure to tell her I say happy birthday.  I've got an air-conditioned movie night ahead of me.  If it's gonna be so hot I don't want to leave the house, I figure I might as well make some popcorn and make the best of it!"

Not only is this pleasanter and more civil, one is left with the impression of two women with an infectious appreciation for their fortunate, full, and happy lives.  They seem dynamic and resourceful, the kind of people who are likely to be enjoyable to be around even if all they're doing is hanging out at home in the air conditioning because it's too hot out for comfort.  They are their own people, talking about their lives, clearly on their own individual and confident courses.

And did you notice?  There are no unexploded grenades lying around to be picked up, no cheap shots waiting to be taken. Gladys and her friend's self-acceptance — acknowledging the skipped yoga class without bemoaning it, embracing the self-indulgence and pleasure of good vacations and birthday cake, taking it in stride that a homey evening of air-conditioning is nicer than being uncomfortably hot — is at the center of it all.

Now, Chubbelinas, do not be discouraged if you cannot always manage this.  It is difficult to resist the siren song of Doing The Things Everyone Expects of you in social situations.  It is hard to break the habits of a lifetime, no matter how dysfunctional or rude one later discovers them to be.  Particularly when one is, in fact, having a moment of self-loathing and genuinely feels that one is about as worthwhile and desirable as a big red pimple on the southbound end of a northbound warthog, it is altogether too easy to give in to the temptation to have a good old-fashioned bash at one's self.  It is a temptation that is even easier to give in to when one has friends one can trust to leap to one's defense with "no, no, don't say that, you're lovely and wonderful" and suchlike. (Speaking of tugging on other people's strings…)

Simply do your best.  Do your best not to give away free ammunition.  Do your best to accept that you are the creature you are, and that in this moment, that is all you can be and there is no use worrying about whatever it is that, in this moment, you are not.  Do your best to be as kind and as positive in speaking of yourself as you would want other people to be in speaking of your best friend.

Most of all, do your best to belong to yourself… even at times when you can't help thinking that you're only doing it because no one else would want you.  It's worth it, Plumplings, and so are you.

 

Mrs. Clarence L. Avoirdupois is the Very Senior Lecturer in Deportment at Miss Hanne's Academy for Extremely Wayward Girls.  She answers etiquette questions and issues philosophical pronouncements regarding all matters corpulent each Tuesday the Eenth.  Queries may be directed to Mrs. Avoirdupois via the comments section in this blog or at her Twitter page.

 

 

                                      

Winners & Sneak Preview

The winner of the Names of Bands book giveaway is the delicious Diatryma!  Please get in touch with me at hanne at hanneblank.com and give me your mailing address, Diatryma, and I shall look forward to hearing you sing "Thair There" at karaoke someday.

For the rest of you, I'm posting a full-length preview of one of the selections from my limited-edition shade-grown fair-trade side project (copies still available!) Inappropriate Crush.  This is a bit of 98% worksafe fiction called "The Management," and it's posted in honor of the birthday of my friend Patrick.  Happy Birthday, Patrick!

 

 

The Management

by Hanne Blank

 

 

To Whom It May Concern:

Do not be alarmed.  This is not a love letter.  A love letter is a thing like a startled deer leaping a fence in its way.  This letter could never fly like that, not even to escape the wolves or the dogs and the men with the guns.  It is not that kind of letter.  The kind of letter this is should be slipped under a screen door, or hidden in plain sight as a bookmark in a book left lying carelessly on a table, not quite asking to be found.

I am appalled at myself, you see.  It is past being something for which a rationalization is possible.  I know you well enough to know that you are not at all what I want.  Other choices have in fact been made.  Large ones, deep ones, the sort of choices from which we we build our lives like dry rock walls, each one heavy and hard and chosen not for the ease of lifting it but for the way it fits, the way it lies, the way it leans into the others such that if any one were removed, the whole would totter.

You measure approximately an 8.7 on the Richter scale.  Do you know this?  Were you to lie along one of my fault lines I would not care to be responsible for what might follow. Seismically, you are a disaster waiting to happen.  I have seen bigger, more dazzling cities toppled by the likes of you before and I am having none of it.

Pursuant to this, there are several items to which I would like to direct your attention:

1.  You are not to appear before me in waking life with tales of having done something that I dreamt of you doing several weeks ago.

2.  You are to cease at once to have hands that make me wonder what they would feel like touching me in very particular places.

3.  Stop wearing those jeans.  You know the ones I'm talking about.  It isn't fair.

4.  Do not under any circumstances kiss me.

Oh, and 5. It does not matter that you didn't know, that I never told you before this.  It cannot come as that much of a surprise.  You know full well what I'm like.

I think you will understand perfectly when I sign this

Inadvertently yours,

The Management

 

 

To Whom It May Concern,

As you are well aware, you have summarily ignored several of the requests made in my previous letter. I realize that you are sufficiently perverse that a reprimand is useless.  Nevertheless I feel it would be remiss of me not to remind you that the requests stand, and that in the future, a respectful willingness to abide by their terms would be appreciated.

I feel I ought also to reaffirm my position in regard to the conversation that passed between the two of us four days ago, when we spoke at the party hosted by our mutual friend.  As you will no doubt recall, I explicitly told you that as you know, I have a partner of many years' standing and I will not do anything that would betray that partnership.

In response you flagrantly violated my second and fourth requests from my previous letter, then, still pulling my head back with your fingers knotted in my hair, you asked, "But what about me?"

My answer has not changed.  I would betray you in a heartbeat.

Constant as the Northern Star,

The Management

 

 

 

To Whom It May Concern,

It may or may not relieve you to know that a cardiologist has pronounced me reasonably fit, and despite administering several unpleasant procedures was unsuccessful in reproducing either the sensation of heart palpitations I felt during our last encounter or the pang under the sternum I experienced just afterward.  It may well be that my susceptibility to such symptoms is dramatically reduced when in a fluorescent-lit examining room with a terse cold-fingered man whose complexion matches his labcoat, and not standing with my back pressed into cinderblock in a dim corner of a parking garage, in a miasma of car exhaust, old piss, and the smell of your skin under that leather jacket.

Until now, I had always felt I could trust my heart.  I believed that it would  always function properly, as nice and as dependable and under as many conditions as one of those Space Pens my mother would never buy for me.   Upside down, like in the commercials. Underwater.  With your knee pushing my skirt taut between my thighs and your hands on my shoulders and your words hot and moist in my hair, in my ear. In free fall.

In this broken world few things are as trustworthy as we might wish.  Sooner or later I suppose we must all include ourselves in that category.

And yet,

The Management

 

 

To Whom It May Concern,

I don't know her name, but in the moment I saw her grab your arm she was as lovely and as hopeful as any woman could ever be, as wide-eyed and tender-souled.  She's an architect, if gossip can be trusted.  Is that true?  I suspect it is. She dressed like one, in that red that was simple but not plain, the three artless bangles on her wrist, the trousers cut just high enough above her ankles to make her legs seem as long as your glance across the room.

You could do much worse.

I wonder if you've kissed her yet.  Probably you have.  You are a thief who steals kisses whether or not they are on offer, as well I know.

I wonder if you've kissed her like you've kissed me.  I can tell you that she wants you to.  I saw the tilt of her chin, the slight arch of her back, the angle of her shoulders.  She bared her throat to you and probably didn't know it, but I did.  And so did you.

I know you haven't fucked her yet.

I'll tell you how I know.  I know because I know you well enough to know that when you've started fucking someone, in the early days, you orbit her — or him, sometimes, but usually her — like a moon that has found the only planet anywhere that knows its terrible and specific lunatic gravity.  And it lasts for a while.  Sometimes a long while, but usually not.

What happened instead was that your eyes stroked her throat and kept going, past that soft smooth breakable arch, not even seeing the razor-cut sculpture of her hair.  You nodded as if you agreed that the noises coming from her lips were words, but what you were really doing was waiting.  Waiting for me to look at you, waiting to make me take the weight of your gaze.  When I let you, my lips parted, a soft exhalation.  Not much.  But I know you noticed: you smiled.

Here's something else I know: You are going to fuck her soon.  You will fuck her with pomp and outrage and absurd, inadvisable tenderness.  You will fuck her like it was a bad decision on prom night.  You will fuck her like you were the sole survivors in a lifeboat.  You will fuck her like she will never have to eat another breakfast alone.

Then you will break her heart.

I'd warn her but there's no point.  You'd do it anyway.  It's what you do.  You do things anyway.  And maybe that's what she wants.

You could do much worse.  And would, if I let you.

Relentlessly,

The Management

 

All rights reserved, y'all.

If you want a copy for your very own, here's what to do.

 

 

 

 

 

                                      

Anticipation!

I'm super excited about the new Big Big Love – excited for you all to finally see this gorgeous thing I've been getting to hold in my hands for the past week or two.  I've given out a few copies to close friends (contest winners to date, yours are in the mail as of this morning) and people have been really digging all the things I love about it, which is very gratifying.  I'm really looking forward to having all the rest of you get your paws on the thing.

There's a way in which a book doesn't feel real until it's out there in the wild where people can find it, and a way in which it really hasn't finished getting published until it's getting read and responded to.

I should remind you all that it's available in ebook format as well as the print version.  For those of you who have print accessibility issues, this should help.  Or, y'know, if you just want it on the e-reader, I'm cool with that too.

As Big Big Love gets ready to make its debut, I should note a couple of things just for the record:

The new Big Big Love is not merely a reissue of the old Big Big Love!  It's completely rewritten, from the ground up, with loads of new content, updated listings, some new organization, an entirely new survey and survey responses, fantastic interviews with amazing people like Substantia Jones and Lesley Kinzel, and even illustrations, something that wasn't possible for the first BBL.

The new Big Big Love is for people of all sizes of fat and people of all sizes of thin.  I've never met anyone who didn't have any issues whatsoever hanging around the place where their body intersected with their sexuality.   If you have issues around sex and your body's size, shape, or appearance, this is your book.  If you face issues around sexuality and your partners' body size, shape, or appearance — or their issues with their bodies! — this is your book too.

Big Big Love is a size-accepting book.  But if you're not someone who considers yourself part of the "size acceptance movement" that's okay!  As one of my interviewees in the book so wisely says, not everyone has to be political and not everybody should be.  I'm pro-choice, and so is my book.

Big Big Love doesn't care if you're straight, queer, bisexual, asexual, or really have no idea what kind of sexual you might be.  Big Big Love  also doesn't care what your sex or gender are, whether they're factory originals or aftermarket modifications, and I can guarantee you it is totally okay with you being experienced, inexperienced, completely celibate, monogamous, nonmonogamous, vanilla, kinky… whatever you've got going on. Everyone's welcome, and as broad a spectrum of you as I could manage are actively verbally included.

I wrote Big Big Love for you.  Yes, you.  I wrote it because I know sexuality is tricky and bodies are tricky and it can really help to get some perspective on things from someone who isn't right in the middle of an emotional situation.  I wrote it because I want you to know that when it comes to sex, it really doesn't matter who you are and it doesn't matter what you weigh, or what the people you are attracted to weigh.  You're a human being and that makes you, and your desires and your needs, real and meaningful.  Love's not measured by the ounce.  The ability to have an orgasm is not correlated to your pants size.   This is about you being a human being, about your quality of life, about your pleasure and satisfaction and joy.  I wrote Big Big Love for you.

 

                                      

Big Big Love Giveaway #3!

Golly, I almost forgot to do this.  It's been a busy day here in Mobtown, what can I say?

Today's signed giveaway copy of the new! improved!  Son of the Revenge of Dawn of the Return of Big Big Love,  will go to the person who proposes the best name for an imaginary band… plus the names of their two biggest imaginary top 10 hits.

Leave 'em in a comment before Monday the 12th at noon to be entered to win.

                                      

Black Bean Sauces

豆豉 is what we're talking about here: in Cantonese, roughly "dao see."  Not black turtle beans, not the kind of thing you make black bean soup out of.  We're talking salted, fermented black soybeans, prepared with or without ginger, as used to make black bean sauce dishes in the Chinese culinary vernacular.

Black beans are a little aggressive. As Garrett McCord put it, "not afraid to get in your face and call your mama ugly."  They are salty, and pungent.  For some people, a little goes a very long way.

Most American-style Chinese restaurants make black bean sauces that really only deserve the name as a courtesy.  When you order them you will find, perhaps, if you are lucky, half a dozen itty-bitty black beans lounging in a mostly clear thick sauce made primarily — most likely — out of chicken or pork broth, a bit of garlic, some MSG, salt or soy sauce (salt in light-colored ones, soy in brown), and cornstarch to thicken.

The real deal is a lot chunkier and gunkier and a whole lot funkier. It is all about those black beans, in other words.  How much you use depends on how much you like the taste of black beans, of course.  At my house, black bean dishes can get pretty darn black.

You can find jars of prepared black bean sauces in Asian markets.  There are lots of brands, not all of them Chinese (Vietnamese and Korean cuisines also have versions I know reasonably well).  There are types that have garlic and types that have chiles, types that have ginger.  The irreducible basis for pretty much all of them is black beans and garlic.

But since all a jar of prepared black bean sauce really has to offer you is the convenience of having the various sauce elements preselected and mooshed up together — and this is pretty trivial to do at home — why not just make it yourself?  It's tastier, fresher, and you can adjust the seasonings exactly as you like them.

Also, if you have the preserved black beans solo, it frees you up to do things with them other than sauce.  For instance, they can be scattered over a piece of fish, along with minced garlic or ginger, before you steam it, and as it cooks it will impart flavor to the fish as well as creating a tasty seasoned liquid in the steaming dish.

But back to black bean sauce.

Let's get this out of the way first: there is no One True Black Bean Sauce.  China's a big damn country, there are additional millions of diaspora Chinese all over the world, there are thousands of ways to use black beans.  All I can tell you here are the basics, and you will have to experiment to find out what you like.   I have, in my time, eaten and cooked black bean sauces that contained oyster sauce, garlic, ginger, sesame oil, dried shrimp, shrimp paste, garlic chives, chili oil, chili paste, fresh chiles, pickled chiles, dried chiles, onion, preserved plum, sugar, hoisin sauce, plum paste, and quite a few other things besides.  All were different and all were good.

What they all have in common is black beans, which you prepare thusly: measure out the amount of black beans you want.  For most dishes, that's a couple tablespoons.  You'll get the hang of it.  Put 'em in a small dish and rinse them well.  Taste one.  If it's still super-salty (and sometimes they are), soak them in water for 10-20 minutes, then drain, and taste it again.  They should be salty, but not so salty you can't happily eat a whole one, because you probably will end up with some whole ones in the finished dish.

Roughly mash the black beans with the back of a spoon or, as I do, with your fingers.  I recommend the finger approach because every once in a while you'll encounter a wee pebble or bit of mud in your black beans, and you can feel this and remove it if you use your fingers.   You don't necessarily want (or need) a totally smooth puree.  Just break up the beans a bit so their funky goodness can come out to play.

The basic method for making a sauce out of this is as follows:

Having first cooked all your ingredients in your wok or pan to almost but not quite the desired level of doneness, you remove them from the pan.  Heat the pan.  Add oil.   (Always hot pan, then oil.  Hot oil, then food.)  When the oil is hot, add the mashed black beans plus an equal quantity by volume of minced or finely chopped fresh garlic plus whatever else you want up in there, for which I have some suggestions:

about half as much by volume of minced fresh ginger
a similar quantity of slivers of fresh chili of your choice
a handful of dried chiles of your choice
about as much hot chili oil as you think you can handle

Stir-fry this until it smells so good you can't stand it any more (shouldn't be more than a minute, if your heat is high enough), then throw the food back in.  Toss with the black beans and etc., add a skosh of soy sauce and/or oyster sauce, and a skosh of water or broth if you think it needs a little liquid to make it saucy enough for you.  Most Chinese home cooks don't thicken sauces very often, but if you absolutely cannot bear not having a thickened glossy restaurant-style sauce, a splash of cold water in which some cornstarch or powdered arrowroot has been dissolved can be added to thicken it up.  Throw in a handful or two of chopped green onion, or cilantro, or both. Keep tossing with the food to distribute the flavors everywhere that you want them to go for a minute or two.  Then transfer into a serving dish and serve.

What's good with black bean sauce?  Other assertive flavors are particularly nice.  I am a huge fan of black bean sauce with pretty much anything in the brassica family: brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, kale.  It's also wonderful with thinly-sliced pork and chunky, wok-charred pieces of thin-walled frying peppers (green or red, doesn't matter).

Alternately, it plays nicely with firm-fleshed fish, with shellfish — awesome with mussels and a metric ton of chopped green onion — and, interestingly, and only if you really like the taste of black beans, with very mildly flavored things like eggplant and tofu.

 

                                      

Big Big Love events, fall 2011

The new, gorgeous Big Big Love comes out in… 13 days!  Here's what I've scheduled so far for book events.  I hope to see you at one (or more) of these.  Don't be shy, come on up and introduce yourself!  All events are free and open to the public except where specified.

Saturday, September 24 at 7 pm

Baltimore Book Festival

"Diversity in Genre Fiction" panel, Maryland Romance Writers stage

Friday, September 30 at 7 pm

Atomic Books, Baltimore

Reading, Q&A, and booksigning — my hometown book launch!  I'll be making homemade cupcakes for this one, so don't miss your chance to get your hot little hands on my buttercream!

Sunday, October 2 at 6 pm

Sugar, Baltimore

My Big Fat Sex Workshop — a two-hour intensive that is truly one size fits all. Come talk and learn about the ins and outs of sex toys, sex aids, and positions for big folks – yes you can get on top! — as well as ways to cope with the insecurities that go along with living in a culture where "you can never be too rich or too thin."  Bring your questions and be prepared to supersize your sex life!  $20, tickets available at Sugar or online via the link above.

Monday, October 10 at 5:30 pm

Giovanni's Room, Philadelphia

Reading, Q&A, and booksigning

Thursday, October 13 at 7 pm

Re/Dress NYC, Brooklyn

Reading, Shenanigans, Treats, Books, and Surprises!

Saturday, October 15 at 3 pm

Good Vibrations, Brookline, MA

Reading, Q&A, and booksigning

Sunday, October 16 at 5:30 pm

Oh My! A Sensuality Shop, Northampton, MA

Reading, Q&A, and booksigning

Friday, November 11 at 7:30 pm

Charis Books and More, Atlanta

Reading, Q&A, and booksigning

Friday, November 11 – Sunday, November 13

National Women's Studies Association Conference, Atlanta

I'll be giving a paper about my work with both editions of Big Big Love at NWSA this year — if you're there, c'mon down and say howdy!

 

NOTE: I still have a few spots of availability this fall for more events.  If you'd like to book me, please email me at events at hanneblank.com!

                                      

And the winner is….

Imbrium!  Schroedinger and his long-suffering cat have won you a copy of the new Big Big Love.  Do please send your mailing info to me at hanne at hanneblank dot com at your earliest convenience.

In other news, there's still time to order your copy of Inappropriate Crush… and there are still about 25 copies left undibsied.

And with that, I've gotta get back to finishing writing Inappropriate Crush.