Just a few days ago, a friend on Facebook asked me to submit a recipe to an exchange that she has started. I set the idea aside, then almost forgot about it until this morning, when I got some family news, the kind that sets you to sighing and remembering and maybe crying a little. The news sent me to my recipe box.
The Home
This recipe comes from my ex-mother-in-law, who is still Mom to me, although I haven't even seen her in twenty years. In a few days, Mom will be moving from the house where she spent most of her married life, to a senior's residence . Just now, I was reading the website for The Home (as Mom calls it) and noticed "restaurant-style meals". That reminded me that Mom won't be doing much cooking anymore, which in turn reminded me of the Facebook challenge.
I grabbed my recipe box, which contains recipes I've gathered over the last forty years or so. Some of the recipes are neatly typed or written on cards, but my favourites are stuffed into the box in their original form -- ripped from newspapers, or better still, written as part of a letter. This one is in Mom's handwriting, so it will never be transferred to a card.
Pour 3/4 of batter in greased cookie sheet (one with sides). Spread one jar of cherry pie filling on top. Spread remaining batter on top in blobs. Bake. Sprinkle with 10X sugar when cool.
There. A recipe with lots of sugar, fat, and nostalgia for the seventies, when we didn't worry quite so much about sugar and fat.
Here's the kicker. It was only when I had printed the recipe into an e-mail and sent it off to the one person on the list that I was supposed to send it to, that I noticed the rest of the instruction: After you've sent the recipe to the person in position 1 below and only to that person, copy this letter into a new email, move my name to position 1 and put your name in position 2. Only mine and your name should show when you send your email. Send to 20 friends BCC (blind copy).
Oh, crap. This is like a chain letter. I don't do chain letters. Now I feel like a spoil-sport.
Never mind, I said to myself. If you post the recipe to the Turtle, that will be kind of sort of like sending it to 20 people, right? But without the pressure?
So if you're planning a 70s themed party for the holiday season, do consider including Mom's recipe -- and let me know how it goes.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Out of the Mouths of Babes
...come words of wisdom. Or so it seems. Maybe. I just came back from a Meetup (That's an official thing, a Meetup. (www.meetup.com) I only found out about Meetup a couple of weeks ago, when Peggy Richardson (that's Peggy on the right) popped into the NaNoWriMo discussion board and proposed a meetup for people doing NaNoWriMo. It sounded good to me, so I joined the group, met some fascinating people -- and since then, have attended two more Meetups. Tonight I met C.J. Gosling, (left) yet another lovely young thing, whose YA novel, The Guardian, will be coming out in February. I got to see the book itself, which is a work of art in more ways than one. The story is beautifully written and also beautifully illustrated.
So we talked about Charity's book (that's CJ's proper name) and we talked about NaNoWriMo and we swapped stories, and I talked about what a hard time I'm having this year, writing my NaNovel. I am trying to explore a mother's nightmare scenario - (one of many possible nightmare scenarios -- Parenthood is such a risky endeavour!) and I keep screeching to a halt. Perhaps I just don't want to go there.
And as we were getting ready to leave, Peggy asked me why I was trying to write from such a dark place when I just don't seem to be that kind of person. Charity said I told great stories, and wondered why I didn't go with those, instead of plumbing the depths of my angst, or my characters' angst...
Well, damn. Food for thought. I'm facing my NaNovel again, wondering whether I should turn around and head in a completely different direction with the story. You know, it's a sad thing to get to be an old lady and still come across as Little Mary Sunshine.
Speaking of (Not)writing, I've also discovered Blip.fm, which has given me endless hours of distraction. I've revisited music I had forgotten all about, like Cream, and music that has stayed with me all through the years, like this:
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The Countdown Is On
NaNoWriMo starts on Sunday. I am suitably excited and nervous and full of dread, especially since I have to be at work at 6 a.m. that day -- no midnight NaNo running starts this year. To make the project seem even remotely feasible, I've been reading all sorts of self-help books and blogs. I have been trying to follow Alexandra Sokoloff's suggestions on plotting, characterization, and setting. Ms. Sokoloff suggests that we start by making a master list of our favourite books and movies -- and/or the books and movies we wish we had written. When I did that, I realized that my favourites are all about character. It doesn't matter what happens to the characters (and in some of my favourite books, Terrible Things Happen.) or where these things happen, as long as I get the chance to know the characters and love them. Wait. That's not altogether true. I much prefer happy endings. I adore chick flicks. Nonetheless, I don't care how happy the ending is if I haven't fallen in love with the characters.
So I had a revelation. I write that way. I am much less concerned with plot than with character, and setting is almost an afterthought. My favourite movie really should be My Dinner with Andre.
This brings me to today. Today, I came across a post at Write Anything that dealt with the topic of Setting and set out several exercises to hone one's skills at description. I played with the last one, and this is what I wrote:
There are three iron tables outside The Vault to which smokers retreat from time to time. There, they can watch the cars go by, make faces at the dogs that always seem to be tied to the lamp post, and shiver in the Vancouver Island damp. Meanwhile, the rest of us have the benefit of huge windows
that let in what sunlight penetrates the clouds. We can sit on the main floor, where the bar is,at high bar stools arranged around little -- that is, small in circumference -- tables. There aren't many of them, because part of the room is taken up by the stage, which is used a couple of nights a week for professional shows or Open Mike.
Or we can sit in considerably more comfortable, shorter chairs at shorter tables on the mezzanine, which is a mere five steps up. The kitchen is located right behind the bar, and from a perch on the mezzanine we can see everything that goes on in the kitchen. Better yet, we can watch the proprietor or his staff prepare perfect cappuccinos, lattes, etc. at those intimidating Italian machines. Of course, we can also hear all this happening -- particularly the coffee making, which is a very noisy operation --louder by far than the music that's piped in. To distract us from the noisefest, there are paintings on the very high walls --works by local artists of an avant-garde bent. The walls themselves are painted an unfortunate yellow, sort of goldenrod, but muddier.
Speaking of the walls, and the art, there is a certain amount of art involved in choosing a place to sit. If you wish to write at your computer, you probably want to sit at one of the tables near the electrical outlets. After a while, you learn where those outlets are. They are generally hidden behind the furniture, but with a bit of acrobatic effort, you can get plugged in, and then you're set for hours. The wi-fi is great, and nobody appears to care how long you stay. Occasionally someone will wander over and offer to sell you a carving of an eagle or a whale, but otherwise you are comfortably incognito.
At the back of the main floor, as you head toward the washrooms, there is an antique (read "battered") buffet on which are stacked fliers, business cards, and several huge plants that bring to mind the Little Shop of Horrors. Adjacent to the buffet is a bulletin board on which are tacked yet more cards, fliers, warnings of impending doom, calls to action...and across the way, behind the pastry case, is the vault door. It's a real vault door, harking back to this venue's origins as a bank. When its banking days were over, the building had several more lives - as an insurance agency and a clothing store and I don't know what else -- before it found its true calling as Demeter's Vault.
Somehow, it all works. I plan to spend much of November at The Vault, as I did last year -- but this time I've managed to convince a few more NaNovelists to meet me there, so my dream of completely taking the place over may yet come true.
