David Dubrow's Blog, page 58

Breadhead Friday: Dutch Oven Experiments

I hauled our cast iron dutch oven out of storage, cleaned and re-seasoned it, and got it ready for some bread baking.  Baking bread in a dutch oven is simple: you preheat the dutch oven in your regular oven, put the dough in there, cover it, and bake it.  For the last few minutes of baking you take off the lid to help color the crust.  A simple Google search on dutch oven bread recipes presented variations on this one by Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery, so I gave it a try.

The crust was nice, the crumb was nice, but there was a certain flavor to it I didn't care for, probably having to do with the overnight fermentation on the counter.  So I adapted a more tried-and-true lean bread recipe, using a cold rise in the fridge, and had much better results.

Okay, great.  What now?

My first experiment was with bacon bread.  Same lean dough recipe, perhaps a little wetter than usual, with pieces of cooked bacon added to the mixing process.  It turned out really well.  There was a faint smoky flavor throughout the loaf, and the little bacon bits added texture.  Any concerns about the salt content of the bacon affecting the yeast were unfounded: it rose just fine in the fridge.  I used the leftover dough to make pizza, which was really quite good.

Bacon dough, pre-rise
Bacon dough, after 3 days in the fridge
The baked bacon bread Bacon bread crumb
Bacon dough pizza with chicken parm and pepperoni
Where else do we go with this?

As I leafed through a Zingerman's catalog, I saw their mail-order breads and found my answer: Parmesan pepper bread.  If the salty bacon didn't mess up the rise, surely a salty cheese like Parmesan wouldn't, either.  Right?

Raw loaf in the hot dutch oven - note the pepper
Parmesan pepper boule
The crumb shot
It came out perfectly.  There's a great, rich taste of Parmesan cheese, mixed with a pleasant, lingering heat from about two teaspoons of black pepper.  As before, I'd done nothing different in the mixing and kneading process: I just added the extra ingredients in the beginning.

No eggs, milk, or butter needed: just a straight flour-water-yeast-salt dough, plus the flavoring of your choice.

Dreadedin Chronicles Is Published!

I'm pleased to announce that my new novella,
It's a novella aimed at a Young Adult (YA) audience, written in cooperation with the Dunedin Public Library.  The story takes place in and around the city of Dunedin (pronounced "dun-EE-din"), Florida.  Most of the novel's supporting characters are based on local teen volunteers.

A limited edition print run will make the book available for borrowing from the Dunedin Public Library in November 2014.

The book blurb states:

Paige Ashton is an ordinary teenager just trying to get through high school. Friendless, she’s socially invisible until bizarre occurrences put her in the spotlight. When disaster strikes on Halloween, why is everyone looking for her? 

College freshman Ryan Kincaid is living a lie: he pretends to go to class but hangs out and drinks with his friends instead. He’s never had to work for anything in his life, so how is he going to save his family from a fate worse than death? 

Soon, they’ll have to face cannibal zombies, a horrible sleeping sickness, and an ancient evil hundreds of millions of years old, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. 

Happy Halloween!

The text includes some Lovecraftian themes, including research using forbidden tomes like the Pnakotic Manuscripts, inhuman civilizations that existed millions of years before our own, and terms like "cyclopean."  , it's practically a steal!

Book Review: The Blue Tent Sky

I can't remember where I found the link to Brian Aitken's Indiegogo site, but I do recall that once I read it, I had to contribute.  His story required it.

The book blurb says, "In 2010 Brian Aitken was sentenced to seven years in prison for possessing firearms he legally owned. He lost everything, including custody of his son, for a crime he did not commit. After spending four months behind bars, Governor Chris Christie demanded his release. This is his story."

For anyone interested in personal freedom, firearms laws, individual rights, or an inside look at an extremely arbitrary and capricious legal system, this book is a must-read.  The early part of Brian's story is immediately recognizable: an acrimonious divorce followed by parental alienation, but it soon spirals into a horribly Kafkaesque nightmare culminating in a seven-year prison sentence for the crime of moving one's lawfully-owned firearms from one residence to another.

While gripping, the book isn't without its flaws.  Some grammatical mistakes, odd phrasing, and disjointed story-telling occasionally mar the narrative; it needed one last pass with an editor before it went to print.  In addition, there's a ham-handed marketing effort to make Brian's story a left vs. right issue, which doesn't fit.  The American left doesn't like guns and wants to outlaw private ownership of them, yes, but this case was about the typical unthinking gun-grabbing that's part and parcel of northeastern liberalism, not a true political effort.  An overzealous prosecutor and disgustingly biased judge wanted to make an example of Brian not because he was a conservative, but because he dared to own guns in their state.

Brian had been gored by two bulls: America's awful family court system (which treats all fathers like disposable potential abusers) and New Jersey's contradictory, even senseless firearms laws.  I can't imagine how terrible it must be to have one's own son ripped away like Brian's, but to be sentenced to prison on top of that for not having done anything illegal is unthinkable.  Despite this, Brian treated the subject matter with admirable grace.

The story hits its nadir with Brian's chilling account of county jail, followed by prison.  As appalling as the experience was, the injustice of it made it even worse, no doubt, and I needed a Silkwood shower after reading it.

Whether or not you can ever see yourself in Brian's shoes, what happened to him was a terrible injustice.  Buy his book.  Read it.  And stay out of New Jersey if you legally own a firearm.

Four out of five stars.

Breadhead Friday: Pizzas I Have Known

It's been another extremely busy week.  Here are the highlights:

The novella is finished editing and has gone on to formatting.  Once again, I've used Mark Coker's Smashwords Style Guide, which is an excellent resource on formatting documents into ebooks.  It's a somewhat lengthy process, but the results are worth it.I trained myself to use GIMP to create a cover for the novella.  GIMP is powerful, easy to use, and free.  Luckily, I have some experience using Photoshop, so GIMP wasn't terribly difficult to learn.  The cover photo was taken by me at 4:30 AM in downtown Dunedin.Everyone says that unless you're a graphic artist, you shouldn't do your own book covers.  That's mostly true. However, I have done professional graphic art and have experience designing both book and video covers.  The cover for Dreadedin Chronicles: The Nameless City is good and captures the feel and look of what I'd imagined.I changed the look of this blog.I practiced baking bread in a dutch oven.  The results have been good, but I want them to be great, so I continue to work at it.With all that in mind, here are some pizzas I have made over the last few months.  This does not represent all of the pizzas; only the ones I remembered to take photos of.
Turkey pepperoni and chicken parm pizza
Turkey pepperoni, grilled chicken, and bacon
Turkey pepperoni, chicken parm, and bacon
Turkey pepperoni and bacon
Sloppy joe pizza
A few notes:

Obviously, my family is keeping the turkey pepperoni industry afloat.  It's a heavy task, but someone has to do it.A chicken and bacon pizza is about as good as it gets, especially if it's chicken parm.  For the sloppy joe pizza, things went in a different but delicious direction: I added some leftover sloppy joes I'd made to the sauce, which gave it some extra protein and diced peppers.  The crust is also different: I used leftover lean dough from a dutch oven boule I'd made earlier in the week.  It's an experiment that's well worth repeating.And just so we don't seem like pigs here, a green salad always precedes pizza,  I call it a "kitchen sink" salad because I add diced apples, strawberries, blueberries, jicama, and papaya to the typical greens, carrots, radishes, cucumbers, peapods, etc.  It's become such a habit that our three-year-old naturally expects a salad before pizza. Go figure.

Fred Zombies and Dreadedin Zombies

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to work with firearms expert Phil Motzer on a number of instructional videos, including Combat Handgun , arguably the best primer on using a semi-automatic pistol for personal defense available.

Not long after our professional relationship ended, his wife asked if I might participate in the first Fredericksburg Zombie Walk, a charity event.  I was unable to attend, but I did send a number of autographed copies of The Ultimate Guide to Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse .  I've done so for every Fredericksburg Zombie Walk since.

This year's Fredericksburg Zombie Walk will be held on Saturday November 1, 2014 at Hurkamp Park, 500 William Street, Fredericksburg VA 22401, from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm.  Please bring a non-perishable food item, cleaning supplies, or a charitable donation.  There'll be prizes and contests and all sorts of fun.

###
The title of my YA Lovecraftian Halloween novel will be Dreadedin Chronicles: The Nameless City.  Electronic copies will be available before Halloween, and physical copies some time in early 2015.  Here is the blurb:
Paige Ashton is an ordinary teenager, just trying to get through high school. Friendless, she’s socially invisible until bizarre occurrences put her in the spotlight. When disaster strikes on Halloween, why is everyone looking for her?

College freshman Ryan Kincaid is living a lie: he pretends to go to class but hangs out and drinks with his friends instead. He’s never had to work for anything in his life, so how is he going to save his family from a fate worse than death?

Soon, they’ll have to face cannibal zombies, a horrible sleeping sickness, and an ancient evil hundreds of millions of years old, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Happy Halloween!

The story will take place in a fictionalized version of the town of Dunedin, Florida, and most of the supporting characters have been taken from local teen volunteers who filled out a questionnaire provided by the Dunedin Public Library.  

"We'll fix it in post." - NaNoWriMo Thoughts

November is National Novel Writing Month, also called NaNoWriMo.  The official site says of it:

"National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.  Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought fleetingly about writing a novel."

You're not supposed to spend time editing this novel you're writing in a month: you're just supposed to write.  It's intended to stimulate creativity and give anyone who succeeds in writing a 50,000-word novel within the time limit the title of "novelist".

I don't get it.  At all.

A big joke in video production is, "We'll fix it in post."  Which means that if there's a flub during the performance that you can't or don't want to re-shoot for whatever reason, you make a note of it and try to edit the final product in such a way as to minimize or eliminate the flub (editing the video is "post-production").  The talent misspoke?  We'll fix it in post.  The lights flickered?  We'll fix it in post.  The mic operator accidentally brained a cast member with the boom and got blood everywhere?  We'll fix it in post.

In publishing, the intent is to get everything perfect.  No mistakes.  Perfection is impossible this side of Heaven, but it's what you shoot for.  No typos, misspellings, plot holes, or formatting errors allowed.  The cover has to look as good as any human anywhere can make it.  There's no room for mistakes in a product that other people will spend money on.

People love to say, "Practice makes perfect."  Like many cliches, it's wrong.  It isn't practice that makes perfect: it's perfect practice that makes perfect.  If you do something wrong every single time, all you're doing is getting practiced at doing something flawed.  Your intent has to be to do it right every single time, not to do it quickly, or to just do it.  It doesn't have to be perfect the first time, or the second, or the third or fourth or fifth.  But you should at least try to make it as good as you can in the beginning.  A ball player doesn't just throw basketballs at the hoop: he tries to make baskets.

With all that in mind, I don't see the value of simply putting an arbitrary number of words on a page just to say that you did it.  Anybody can do that.  I understand that plenty of people who write just want to get words on the screen as that first draft, but that makes little sense.  Every draft of my work represents the best I could do at that time.  The more work you do in the beginning, the less you'll have to fix in post, and the closer you'll get to perfection.  Start out well, and you'll finish well.

Obviously, I'm not the gatekeeper for who can call himself a novelist and who can't, nor do I want to be.  It's very much a meaningless title that anyone can acquire just by saying so.  If by the end of NaNoWriMo you then feel comfortable putting the novelist crown on yourself, feel free.  Nobody's stopping you.  There's no barrier to entry, no quality control to endure, and nobody to take it away from you.  Is that really what you want?

The writers I most admire don't do NaNoWriMo, or if they do, they don't talk about it.  I'm very much a "model success" sort of person; if Paul Auster or Jonathan Carroll don't sign up for NaNoWriMo every November, they probably have very good reasons for it.

Each of us has his own individual process for writing.  If NaNoWriMo is your thing, great!  I wish you the best of success.

It's just not for me.

Bits and Pieces

Breadhead Friday's canceled today while I go out and do instead of talk about what I did.  In the calm before today's storm, here are a few more or less random thoughts.

Yesterday, my wife and I went to see Gone Girl .  The dialogue was terrible.  When it wasn't cliche, it was stilted and unrealistic.  Nobody talks like people in that movie did, unless they're in a book.  The notion of the unreliable narrator was so pervasive that you couldn't care about any of the characters.  Not only were they unlikable, they were unknowable.  It was interesting to see Tyler Perry outside of a fat black woman suit.  I hope he does more roles that don't require that contrivance, because he was the only bright spot in the cast.  Ben Affleck shouldn't act in anything serious, because he can't be taken seriously.  There were two moments of real fun in the film, both of which happened near the end: a scene of shocking violence, and a brief moment of pathos.

Previews for Exodus: Gods and Kings left me cold.  I'm a little concerned that they're going to secularize the story of Moses.  On the Passover holiday, "[E]ach person is obligated to see himself or herself [lirot et atzmo] as though he or she personally came forth from Egypt."  So there's a personal component here.

J D Mader has written a piece here about book reviews.  In it, he redefines the nature and purpose of book reviews to only mean what he thinks it should mean, and claims that everyone else is doing it wrong.  Because he's "annoyingly ethical."  Which means that if we don't rethink the review system and review books according to his viewpoint, we're being unethical.  What's missing from the piece are:
A comprehensive list of which books are actually worthy of a five-star review so the rest of us aren't acting unethically and ruining the redefined system.Any meaningful discussion of how subjective a book review can be.The difference between great art and great entertainment (some people liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo more than Ethan Frome, and there's nothing wrong with rating them according to preference).Specific criteria that will teach the unethical lot of us who broke the perfect system how to review books properly.The librarian at the Dunedin Public Library with whom I'm working to produce the YA Halloween novella very much enjoyed the draft I sent her, so we're working on next steps.  The book needs a cover image.  And another run-through with an editor.  These things are doable.  There may be a print copy made available, but we'll see.  

The Cabin in the Woods Sucked

There are some movies you just like right off the bat, and some movies that you think you should've liked and didn't.  There was just something about them that was off-putting in some way, and you need to dig deeper to figure out why.

Star Trek Into Darkness was one of those technically competent but off-putting films, but the reason was simple: it was a 9/11 Truther allegory.  I'm disgusted that I paid to see it.

The Cabin in the Woods was another.  This discussion is predicated upon the reader having seen the film; if you haven't, what follows won't make much sense.

On the surface, it was a black comedy/horror film, exposing traditional horror movie tropes, making fun of them, and turning them upside-down.  Lots of people liked it: it got a 7.1 out of 10 on the IMDB scale, and a 91% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes.  In today's "we're all so over everything" post-modern culture, it was hailed as an achievement in meta-filmmaking.

In reality, it was a thumb in the eye from Hollywood to every horror fan.  Few of us go to the movies to have our intelligence insulted by pseudo-intellectuals, but that's what The Cabin in the Woods did.  The writers, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, are as culpable as anyone for the shallow, lifeless tripe Hollywood foists upon an undiscriminating public, but with this ha-ha-wink-wink film, they try to distance themselves from the mess they helped create.

The slasher movie archetypes they lampoon as necessary to the ritual weren't created by Hollywood: they're high-concept.  The Scholar, the Whore, the Virgin, the Athlete, the Fool: they're people we can all identify with, because all of us have been one or more of them at one time or other.  They work, and it can be argued that most films of any genre contain these characters.  So the attempt to mock them as overdone tropes falls short.

As for the formulaic nature of slasher films, which is the largest target of TCitW, we only have Hollywood to blame.  The lack of imagination, the attempts to appeal to the widest audience possible through bowdlerizing material, and the sheer number of remakes shows even the most casual observer that Hollywood has run out of ideas.  Last summer's box office take was down, and it can't all be blamed on the economy.  If you put out the same, already-done crap over and over again, eventually we'll stop going to the movies altogether.  But until we do, don't make us out to be the idiots for going to see your movies.

These Ancient Ones that demand the ritual be performed in a certain way, you see, are us: the stupid movie-going public.  If the Whore isn't killed, if the Athlete doesn't die horribly, then the ritual fails, and the Ancient Ones destroy the world.  That's the filmmakers' way of washing their hands of the mess Hollywood created.  They've fed us crap for so long they think we expect crap, and if we don't get crap, we'll complain.  Think about the sheer chutzpah of that, the superiority inherent in that way of thinking.  That's what galls me: they blame their own lack of imagination on us.

They're not that clever.  And we're not so stupid.

Flash Fiction: Angry Ghost

Warning: NSFW for language.          

           The worst part about being dead wasn’t that every day was the same.  That might have been bearable.  Reliving a whole day would have provided plenty of experiences to savor, from the Denny’s All-American Slam breakfast (toast subbed for pancakes, as usual) to the last frame of So You Think You Can Dance before bed (all that athletic flesh trapped in skintight spandex).  If that had been his afterlife, he would have had no complaints.           Instead, he just kept re-experiencing the last fifteen minutes.  The strange car parked outside.  Pulling into the driveway.  Getting into the house.  Gladys and some kid half her age, fucking on the couch like they were trying out for Vivid Video’s Anal Invaders #37.  The agony in his chest and left arm.  The EMT’s concerned face.  Blackness.           Again.           And again.           And again.           He’d lost count once the repetitions reached the quadruple digits.           Oh, at first he’d tried to change things, to break the cycle.  Flip the script.  Think outside the box.  Jump off the merry-go-round.           It was impossible.             He was locked in.  No matter how loud his mental shouting, how hard he tried to just twitch a muscle, blink an eye, do something different, he couldn’t.  Everything remained exactly the same, from Gladys’s sweaty, shocked face to the horrible gasping noise that served as his last words (meant to be “You whore,” but sounding more like, “oohhrrrchhhuhh” in the extremity of his myocardial infarction).  There was no changing the past.  If this was Hell, the Devil had incredible attention to detail.             Eventually, he started to get angry.           Very angry.           No white light at the end of a tunnel of darkness for him.  Why not?  Why did he just get the darkness?  She was the one cheating on him!  This endless Hell was unjust.             The unfairness of it swelled his anger to fury.             And it absolutely did not stop.  Unconsciousness required a brain; his had died long ago.           His shrieks went unanswered.           His pleas fell on deaf ears.           His fury spiraled.           He spent years screaming, a ceaseless roar of rage, and despite the same scene playing itself over and over and over and over throughout, he finally felt something different.  An infinitesimal change, but it was as welcome as water in the Gobi.             Through the humiliation of seeing his wife being pleasured on all fours by another man, the pain of the heart attack, and the taste of blood in his mouth from biting his tongue halfway through, he experienced an odd sensation of movement, as though he’d tried to shove something but was pushed back instead.            This was it!  He eagerly capitalized on it, duplicated it, multiplied it.  Thiswas his ticket to escape, and after that, revenge.  The cheating, faithless bitch who’d killed him, who’d made his last moments of life such hell, would pay for it.  Somehow.           More movement.  It was working.           And more humiliation, of course: just because he felt a change, even the tiniest bit, it didn’t mean he was actually free.  He could still see Gladys’s young lover’s straining buttocks, hear her gasps and groans, smell their frenzied sex.  The cycle didn’t end.             But now there was more.           Focusing every last iota of anger, he sought form, and with form, solidity.  Whatever it took, he would do it.           A year passed.             Another year.             The endless loop didn’t close: it just swelled to include this new experience.  In addition to the pain of one third of his heart rupturing in his ribcage, he felt an expansion of his will.  To betrayal was added hope.  To fury was achievement.           His focus strengthened.  He gathered what he could to make his hatred tangible.  The dust motes floating in a sunbeam.  Loose carpet fibers from where he’d fallen to the floor, dying.  Even drifts of hair from Gladys’s cat, feline remnants stuck to the bottom of the sofa.  What did it matter if these things were all but insubstantial?  His fury was harder than titanium, sharper than steel.  It would suffice.           But he had to wait.             The moment had to be right.           No slamming doors and rearranging cupboards for him.  He was no poltergeist.  He was an avenging angel.  Vengeance personified.             A life for a life.  It was only fair.           So he waited, using the never-ending fifteen minute cycle of his death as a spur to keep him together.  Literally.           And when it was time, he would throw himself upon her like a sandstorm, scouring the skin from her bones with the force of his righteous anger.  But not before she learned who’d done it.  She had to know it was him.           Soon, he began to look forward to the endless replay, those last minutes before death when he saw her face.  The surprise, the shock.  He hoped she’d have the same look before he blinded her.           At long last, with his rage honed to the purest edge, he saw her.  No replay, this.  This wasn't Memorex: it was live.  She’d moved the sofa to clean behind it, wearing makeup she’d never worn for him at home.  How often had she been fucking that kid since he’d died?  Did they fuck in their marriage bed?  The kitchen?           Screaming soundlessly, he launched himself at her, a whirling vortex of vengeful fury.             He was Death Incarnate, and in her last sight, she would—           With a faint expression of distaste, Gladys lifted the vacuum cleaner’s wand to suck up the sudden puff of lint and cat hair that had drifted up.             She should’ve cleaned back there years ago.

Breadhead Friday: Doughnuts

I'm expanding Breadhead Friday to include all things made with yeast, and in this case, I'm adding doughnuts.  They're very time-consuming, from making the dough to letting it rise twice to cutting, shaping, frying, filling, and decorating.

But if you have the inclination and gumption, they're worth it.  
At a kitchen store a few years ago, I bought a two dollar doughnut cutter for the traditionally-shaped doughnuts (with a hole).  For the jelly-filled, I used an empty, clean tuna can with a hole in the middle to let the air out when pressing down.

The recipe I used is a basic paczki dough.  Paczki are Polish doughnuts, usually filled with cream cheese, jelly, or other fruit filling.  My only alteration to the dough was letting it do its first rise in the fridge; if I use this recipe again, I'll let it do its second rise in the fridge instead.  
Frying in a pot of oil
A different batch frying up
For the frosting, I did a chocolate ganache and a confectioner's sugar glaze, both similar to these recipes from King Arthur.
Jimmies aren't necessary, but nice to have
Unfortunately, I learned too late in the process that the doughnut-filling device I typically use went missing; it probably didn't survive one of the several moves we've done over the last few years, so I had to forego the filling on the solid doughnuts.  
Rolled in sugar right out of the fryer
By doughnut-filling device, I mean a 99 cent plastic squeeze bottle.  Like this one.  For fillings without seeds, they're perfect.  I'll have to get some more someday.
One batch of dough made this many doughnuts
There's no way we could eat the entire batch, so most of them ended up in the freezer.  They'll keep.
And, of course, the crumb shot