Clip show!

Y'all have read all this already, but m'friend'n'colleague Deborah J Ross has abstracted what I said yesterday about being ready to publish, and made it a guest blog on her site. With pretty links to certain of my books, too. Isn't that nice?

You'll always find me in the kitchen on Mondays

It's a holiday here: Labor Day, I believe. Some pinko commie celebration: just what you'd expect, really. Our yard guy is hard at work outside the house (making me feel guilty in all possible directions all at once, because really I should be doing that stuff, mowing the grass and so forth, I could do that; but then I'd be taking work from someone who needs it, and it is the business of the wealthy man to give employment to the artisan, and so forth; but I feel trapped for an hour inside my own house, and I hate that; and, and, and) and Karen and I are both doing our own work at opposite ends of the house, in our own separate studies.

Actually an hour ago I was thinking, "Maybe I could declare this a day off?" I've been up since six, and I am making sourdough bread and fed m'beloved and myself on French toast with bacon and put together a slow-cooker stew of lamb shanks and many veggies in a sauce of red wine and mustard lifted with a little balsamic, and basically I spent all morning in the kitchen when I wasn't out shopping; but then I had to open TextMaker to give me access to a pound sign (this here US keyboard doesn't seem to have one, can you believe it?) and while I was there I thought I might as well take a look at something I'm writing, and... Yeah. Not a day off, then.

Though there is something terribly tempting about it, when you open a bottle of wine before midday. I put a judicious cupful into the slow cooker, and a judicious stopper into the bottle. Not before five on a workday. Harrumph.

Also, boys are cute in boxes. I'm just sayin'.



(Barry observes that he is not at all cute, no sir, he is a furocious predator, possibly lying in ambush; and I totally did not see him earlier skittering about with a rolled-up ball of paper. That must have been some other idiot cat. Barry was undoubtedly sleeping at the time, as any sensible predator would be. Conserving his power. Yes.)

Also also, still on the foodie kick

A couple of weeks ago I made refrigerator pickles: a couple of jars of cucumber spears with garlic and chilli, and a jar of whole baby carrots with the last of my crop of green beans.

I just popped the lids and tasted them both. And they are sharp and sweet and tangy, with a definite bite from the fresh chiles de arbol which I also grew*. Internet, I am please.


*For the avoidance of doubt: I didn't in fact grow the cucumbers, neither the carrots. Nor the garlic. Next year, yes to all of those, I hope.

Home, you idle creatures, get you home; is this a holiday?

The lamb shanks are mulching down pleasingly with the onions and carrots and celery and mushrooms and garlic and mustard and wine - but shall I be American and serve potatoes alongside, or shall we be French and stick with fresh bread? (There will also be Beans of All Hues, green and pink and speckly: the green will be the hearts of broad or fava beans, bejewelled en cabochon; the pink and speckly are shelling beans, which is basically pulses still in the pod, to be boiled fresh, except for those few that are my own green beans that I left on the plant too long and then dried in a spirit of curiosity, and have now shelled out and soaked overnight to de-dry them. And there might be a little salted buttered kale on the other side.)

And I went out to post some letters and it was just such a gorgeous day* that I kept on going, all the way downtown. Where most places were closed, but not all: so I had a little retail accident and came home with a cookbook. Whoops. I already had one of those, y'know? Possibly more than one.

And my conscience says I should be writing a book, but, y'know. I've already done that too. Possibly more than once.


Apparently California - to its undoubted shame - fails to observe that fine tradition of raining on public holidays. So I am running the garden sprinkler, in a gesture towards what is proper.

Oh, and:

Mac: not at all affected by his reading-matter, oh no... (Click through for the truly scary effect; it's a shame not to recognise his effort.)



Meanwhile, Barry goes for tiger stripes:

A statement of position

I have absolutely no interest in being told why anyone would want to buy Margaret Thatcher's old clothes, regardless of cost - I'm just rather baffled as to why in the world she might be selling them? This wasn't a charity auction, as far as I can see - and it's not like she needs the money, so what gives? If she needs space she could donate, she could give away; she could raise tens of thousands of pounds for worthy causes. But no! *is a little baffled by rich mad bad people*

In other news, my study wherein I sit and speak to you, O internets, used to be the garage of this house: which means it opens into what I want to call the scullery but should probably call the utility room. Or the mud room: I quite like having a mud room. (I knew some rich sane good people once whose first room in from the back of the house was the dog room. Actually ours could be the cat room, except that they'd never hold still for it. When we shut them out here, it's known as Durance Vile.)

Anyway: space with lots of machinery in it, boiler and laundry and so forth. And kitchen devices too: we have a shelf where they can sit, conveniently just below a power socket. Inter alia, that's where the slow cooker is. I have to pass it every time I come and go in or out of the house proper. Every time, I pause to taste the stew. This has absolutely nothing to do with assessing, adjusting, cooking the damn thing. It's sheer greed: like snatching a spoonful of soup every time you pass the cauldron.

Now I must go and look at my bread. 'Scuse me...