Category Archives: Food

Writerly Support

In my regular circle of friends there is a disproportionately large number of NaNoWriMo participants, and most of us got together last night for mutual support. (That proportion is complemented by the frustrated artists, who were not with us. We’re a very creative bunch when we’re given the opportunity.) It’s a good group, and we discussed a lot of really neat stuff while enjoying some good food. One of the things we talked about was the Cheesy Fantasy Epic, which Dez claims writes itself because it’s formula, formula, cliche, formula. Sounds like his material is marketable already! (Don’t mind me, I’ve just worked in the book business for eleven years, and cannot believe the crap that gets published. This of all things assures me that someone I know, if not myself, will be a published author some day, because our worst is still better.)

We discovered things in common, such as people trying to sneak in novel-writing at work while on the phone, people forgetting to eat, working late at night, writing huge blocks less often, and so forth. One of my friends, when we pressed him for his word count, was remarkably stubborn, and he finally admitted that he’d begun a novel and it had hit a brick wall, so after arguing fruitlessly with it for a couple of days he’d abandoned it and begun a new one a day or so ago. We were stunned, but cheered when he told us that he’d written a few chapters already (although he still didn’t share his word count!). It takes guts to abandon something you’ve put time into, even if it’s dead in the water.

Everyone’s optimistic, everyone’s having fun, and the only damper on the evening was when the waitress told us that they had run out of cider.

This morning I teach, my informal Shakespeare reading group reads another play aloud this afternoon (which keeps growing no matter how hard I try to keep a limit to it; if everyone shows up we might have a seating problem!); tomorrow, I will write. I called it quits last night an hour before I had to leave for the meeting; I could have stayed and hacked out more, but I was tired. This left my word count just a thousand shy of half-way to 50K, which was a bit frustrating, but it’s good to know that when I sit down on Sunday that milestone will be passed.

Ups and Downs

Seeing the end of October creep up on me, and knowing that the last time I sat down to work on the Great Canadian Novel was about two and a half weeks ago, I threw some Tori Amos in the CD changer yesterday and sat down on the living room floor with my laptop. I wrote three pages and felt really good about myself. I’d stopped being as curious as I had been about my GCN world, and deliberately immersing myself in it again was good – it felt comfortable. I also felt a bit worried, what with NaNoWriMo looming. Having two novels on the go is a bit like having a new child and having to soothe the elder sibling: no, I still love you, I haven’t forgotten you, this new baby just needs so much attention…

Then I amazed myself by getting up and making a wonderful dinner that included baked chicken, and brussels sprouts done in cheese, onions, and lemon butter. (“What are these?” asks my husband. “Baby cabbages,” I answer, unconcerned, as I begin to eat. “Oh,” he says, munches on one, and begins to rave about it. “I didn’t expect you to like brussels sprouts so much,” I remark calmly, reaching for my water glass. He faltered for only an instant, brave man.) After dinner, he asked what he’d done to deserve a big dinner, and I told him that as of Friday, I wouldn’t be able to do things like this, so I thought I’d get one in before I sacrificed my life to NaNoWriMo.

Yesterday was pretty good. Then this morning…

Argh.

I spent two hours setting up Eudora as my mail program, importing my Outlook Express stuff, and generally fumbling around until I can at least use the ruddy thing. I have experience with Eudora; we used it at work once or twice a week to mail out newsletters and such, so it’s not like I’ve never seen it before. Still, I get as frustrated as the next busy human when I can’t grasp things immediately. I also went through a bunch of old e-mail to delete it from OE before I exported stuff to Eudora, simply to save room, and it always takes longer than I expect – click, scan, click to delete; rinse, repeat. Boring. Like housework. Tidy, polish, sweep, dust.

Gods, it’s all so exciting, I think I’ll have to take a break and go lie down.

Buried Treasure

As I was cleaning up today, I found, in the bottom of one of my armoires, a box of Bourbon Cremes.

Finding cookies in a wardrobe is an odd occurrence, I grant you, but it’s directly related to my act of hoarding them away from the light fingers of my ever-munchy husband. My mother gave me this box, and I was determined that every single one of these biscuits was to be mine, mine, mine.

Three-quarters of them were indeed blissfully mine. Then I forgot about them.

It was like finding buried treasure. I brought them out, opened the box, nibbled one. A slight staleness, but when they’re glorious Bourbon Cremes, what’s a breath of stale? The cream filling was still soft and light, and hadn’t hardened in the least.

There’s four left. I’m going to ration them out this afternoon when I eventually flop down on a chesterfield to read, once I’m done with my sewing.

Evidently, I’ll have to pick up another box or so while I’m down visiting my parents at Thanksgiving. This time, I’ll put them in a tin when I hide them, so they don’t grow stale.

Tea Bliss

New favourite place on earth: Betjeman & Barton, the tea emporium at 5131 Sherbrooke in Westmount. Milk-gallon sized tins of loose tea across the back wall of the shop. Teapots and cups in all shapes and sizes. Preserves and sugars and chocolates to go with your tea. Cosies. Strainers. Tea balls. And as soon as you walk in the door, the scent of dry tea leaves in the air.

Heaven, I tell you.

Fun and Games

Yesterday we cleaned out the fridge. We do this out of self-defence periodically; not because we’ve run out of room, but because we don’t know what might be back there. We liberated a few Tupperware containers from bondage and discovered not one, but four bottles of wine that were open. This comes about as a result of people bringing wine over for parties and such, not finishing the bottles, and saying, “Hey, that wine in the fridge, it’s all yours,” as they leave. I forget it’s there until a time such as this.

“How many bottles of wine are in here?” my husband asked, peering into the depths.

“We should pour them all together in a pitcher,” I said. I was joking. But then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t. “We could mix them and blend them with 7-Up and have kind of a sangria,” I said. My husband looked at me oddly, but gave me the bottles of wine. I tasted each first to make sure it hadn’t soured; nope, the three whites were fine. The single red, however, was definitely past its prime. I wouldn’t even be able to cook with it. Down the sink it went while the husband went to buy 7-Up. I found a bottle of lime cordial in the fridge that had only an inch or so of cordial left; I poured that in as well, being minus the lemons and limes I like to put in mixes like this. And the whole thing tasted divine.

We made dinner, poured glasses of the mystery mix, and decided to play Junior Trivial Pursuit. Ordinarily this means it’s a quicker game than the adult edition. However, the edition of Junior Trivial Pursuit I own is the original version, dating back from 1984. (Go ahead. Count on your fingers. Yes, it’s perilously close to twenty.) This means it asks many questions based on contemporary pop culture like information about hockey leagues and now-defunct sports teams, and the question that stumped us both: what is the Sugar Crisp bear holding on the Sugar Crisp box? The box has since been redesigned, so it was more of a challenge that we’d anticipated. This is definitely a game we’ll have to pull out at a party, just to watch people rummage around their two-decade old store of history. It was terrific; a mix of a walk down memory lane, a high school reunion, and a realisation of how much the world has changed.