C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 105

Catie’s Ham & Bean Soup

Start by roasting a big ham with a lot of fat on it. Ideally roast it in a cast iron pan, so you don’t have to pour the melted fat into another pan when you take it out of the oven, but whatever works for you.

Make an egregious amount of ham gravy. Three cups or more.

(You’ve never made gravy? It’s easy. Take a half cup of flour or so and put your sautee pan of ham fat on a decently high heat. Sprinkle in some of the flour. Mix it with a fork until it’s blended. Keep doing this in small amount...

Magic & Manners: Chapter Three

With ongoing apologies to Jane Austen, and a wish for all to have a Happy Midwinter Holiday, I present to you the third chapter of MAGIC & MANNERS, which is what happens when I get it into my head to wonder what PRIDE & PREJUDICE would be like if it was not a lack of wealth that beleaguered the Bennet sisters, but rather an excess of magic…

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three lies behind the cut. :)

Chapter Three

Indeed, for three full days Mr Dover found it expedient to confine himself to his l...

birthday of the unconquered sun

I cannot for love or money get this Birthday of the Unconquered Sun account to work, so I’m going to have to bail on that aspect of it. However, if people want to send pictures in to my email address botuc at OUTLOOK dot COM that would be great!, that would be cool!

The post birthday of the unconquered sun appeared first on The Essential Kit.

Picoreview: Frozen

Picoreview: Frozen: conflicting.

There are a lot of things I didn’t like about this movie. The music is possibly the worst I’ve ever heard in a Disney film. Usually their songs tend to fit into the narrative pretty well; this really felt like the songs were being forced to fit into spaces unnaturally, and that these characters would prefer to be speaking.

There were any number of times that I found myself thinking how much I would like to have seen it done in hand-drawn animation. There were mo...

more media plans :)

I just discovered Ron Perlman is on Twitter (he’s perlmutations, since the resounding response from my Twitter feed was WHAT WHERE?!) and this has somehow immediately blown out of control into an 2014 International Re-Watch Beauty and the Beast-fest, so, y’know, if you’ve been meaning to do that, we’ll be doing that next year. An episode a week, probably, starting early (but probably not instantly) in the new year, with live tweeting. :)

Along with re-reading Guy Gavriel Kay’s novels and clear...

birthday books

Upon the occasion of his 11th birthday, we gave our older nephew THE SWORD OF SHANNARA, A PRINCESS OF MARS and the Complete Novels of Sherlock Holmes.

He opened the Shannara book and looked at it with great dubiousness, proclaiming, “I’ve never heard of Terry Brooks.”

“This time last year, you hadn’t heard of David Eddings, whom you now love,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “How did I find out about David Eddings?”

“Aunt Catie gave you the books,” my sister Deirdre said dryly, and he c...

Aer Lingus: Fail

My parents had Adventures in Airlines flying to America in October, and have been trying to resolve it since returning home. This is a repost of my Mom’s latest update on the situation:

I’ve been trying for a couple months to get a response from Aer Lingus regarding our trip to America in mid-October. Today I received a “donotreply” from them in which they cheerfully acknowledged that their agent screwed up, but essentially said, “Too bad.” My reaction is to write to the only source available...

Picoreview: The Desolation of Smaug

Picoreview: The Desolation of Smaug: It is my personal hope that there will be a 2 hour Director’s Cut of The Hobbit that only has, you know. The stuff in the book.

We re-watched An Unexpected Journey last night, which is frankly a long, long movie in which almost nothing happens. Smaug possibly, if you look at it sideways, has more happen, but (major structural spoilers ahoy)

they cut the movie in the wrong fucking place. I mean, as in, they left me genuinely pissed off at the end. The movie’...

The TBR Shelf Listing:

Not, infuriatingly, in alphabetical order, because my books aren’t that organized right now, grr.

There are several I’ve got on my e-reader that I’m not going to list right now because it’s too much effort to turn it on, and some I’ll hopefully get for Christmas, but yeah. There’s already 50 books on this list and that’s not including (save one) the GGK re-reread.

And then in 2015 I will read ALL THE BOOKS BY PEOPLE I KNOW that I am not caught up on, because gawd. Seriously, if I culled those o...

total fanboy moment

So last night I was catching up on Guy Gavriel Kay‘s journal instead of going to sleep as I should have been, and I’m skimming along and something italicized caught my eye as I flashed past it:

Meeting Guy Gavriel Kay pretty much turned me into a gibbering idiot. The worst part was that he’s kind of shy, so after I babbled at him I literally couldn’t figure out a way to keep–or more accurately, *start*–an actual coversation. “I love your books!” I said to him. “They make me cry!”

“Everybody says that,” he responded, a little wryly. “I’m afraid that’s what they’ll put on  my gravestone: “He made me cry.””

Me: *inane attempts to assure him I meant it in a good way, followed by slinking off feeling silly*

Huh, I thought as I skimmed by, that sounds like something I’d write. Or wrote. Wait. WAIT. I DID WRITE THAT!WHAT?!? *scrolls back, discovers that yes, in fact, I have been name-checked in GGK’s journal, turns purple from blushing*!

Anyway, the post was about author encounters, and somebody had pointed him at a guest blog I’d done recently where I was asked if there were any writers that made me weak in the knees at the idea of meeting, to which I responded the above. :) He said he wasn’t actually shy, and I admitted that possibly my SHEER NERVOUSNESS had caused me to attribute shyness to him when it was really more panic and flailing on my part. :)

And then this morning he’d emailed me to say “Next time we’re in the same area, find me, and if you eschew nervousness I shall endeavor not to be shy!”

Excuse me while I do a totally dorkalicious fanboy dance. :)