We went away. Again.

I am, as you know, barely back from Portland, where there was sun and rain and calendula_witch and Mark, and I wanted to buy half a bookstore but had to content myself with a couple of books, and we had fabulous Thai with davidlevine and kateyule, and I learned a new card game and and and.

Nevertheless, yesterday Karen packed me and our bags into the car and we drove over the hills to Santa Cruz, to stay overnight with Mike and Paula and Nate. And a fine time was had by all, or at least by us; and it rained and rained, and we saw the harbour lights and the ridiculously overdecorated house in a drive-by kind of way, and it rained and rained, and we may have drunk quite a lot of wine actually, and this morning was the first time I have seen a houseowner dashing about in shorts and rainwater because he was worried that his swimming pool might overflow. The phrase "First World problems" may have escaped his lips, but hey. It's a worry.

Among other worries, I worry that I may have wasted the whole of this last month specifically, and most of the year generally, in a writerly kind of way. It's not really much consolation to learn that I am not the only novelist who has moved to California and effectively lost a year's output in the doing and the adjustments and so forth; schadenfreude was never much my thing.

But anyway. I am making myself feel better by clarifying spiced butter in an Ethiopian kind of way, and making South African sausage balls to fry in it, and roasting little baby potatoes in cummerbunds of rosemary and garlic, and only not cooking collard greens to go with because the collard greens are too old and tired and I wouldn't do that to them, it isn't fair.

Also I am drinking two-buck Chuck (it's red wine! for two dollars a bottle!), which may actually be improved for having breathed for about five days.

Ballade des pendus

Sossidge good. The boys are outraged; I made sossidge, and we ate it all. Also, I highly recommend niter kibbeh, which is Ethiopian spiced clarified butter, and just yummy to cook with.

In other news, when a man is scared and depressed already (when he's not making sossidge and clarifying his spiced butter and so forth), he should probably not read François Villon. I blame Dorothy L Sayers, absolutely.

Review!

Pandaemonium got a mention in the Telegraph, courtesy of Dave Langford. Desi would be chuffed. (And my old mate Bryan Talbot's new Grandville book shares the limelight, so I'm chuffed too.)

A question! Of grammar!

Huh. Can two people share one behalf, or must it be always individual? Specifically, when an adult allows two children to do something, does she accept on their behalf or on their behalves? I am not sure I have ever seen "behalves", but my fingers tripped over "their behalf", so I thought I'd ask. I suppose they have common purpose, which might incline towards the singular - but on the other hand, the benefit falls to each of them individually, even if they undertake the action collectively, so...

Bragging about hummus, while asking a question about grammar

Hunh. I may just have made the best hummus in the known universe: a combination of roasted garlic and the ice-cube technique. I think it may be lovely.

In other news, I know that it is technically a solecism to say "she knew what she was doing to her family, how she disgraced them all", but do we think it a solecism we can get away with*? I did actually originally write "...how she disgraced it", but then I decided that I just don't like that. The family consists of individuals, and each is discretely and differently disgraced by her behaviours, the wicked creature, so...


*Like that one, eg.

PS

(So you know that thing where all cats sit on paper, any paper, especially if you happen to be reading or working from it? Well, Barry is refining this practice. He is currently sitting on my Kindle.)

SETI is geti to me, perhaps, just a little...

I may just have shaped my hummus into Gale Crater, with Mount Sharp in the middle of it. And, um, four little roasted garlic cloves Curiosity Rovers, just for balance. Oh, and a flood of liquid olive oil water...

I'm just sayin'

It's December, and the nasturtiums are still in flower. If they keep this up, I shall treat them as a winter food crop. Then they'll be sorry.

In other news, I'm only wearing boots because we're going up to the city, to the Academy of Sciences. We'll be there all day, then meet Karen and others after work and go for dinner. It's a hard life. But I deserve it, because I did finally write -30- at the bottom of this damn story I've been working on for ever. First draft, anyway. 14K of it; I must have written 3K yesterday. Tomorrow, I make it shorter again. By more than 3K, hopefully.

The quantum of the opposite of solace

According to our informations, my shipping is currently both (a) "arrived with US Customs" in LA (we have a tracking number and everything) and (b) dumped somewhere in Mexico because there was a port strike in LA and the shipping company couldn't sit it out. I am a little bewildered by this latest development, and very on edge about other stuffs, and. Up before seven again, and disturbing two cats to do it. It ain't natural...

However. We had a lovely day yesterday: up to the city with Katherine and Laurie, breakfast with Andrew (and a whole new technique for little omelettes) and then we all hied over to the Academy of Sciences, to go ooh and aah at frogs and fishes and butterflies and such. They have an albino alligator called Claude, and a three-storey rainforest and so forth.

Then back to Andrew's to make ourselves pretty, and so up to Leopold's for Andrew's birthday dinner with Karen and a whole crew of folk filing in after work. Salumi and pig's trotters for starters, and then there were beef short ribs to the left of me and pork loin to the right of me and pig's cheek ahead of me. Oh, and beers. Several beers of different persuasions inside me. It's all good.

The ragtags of a rotten education

My school refused to let me study Latin, but even so: these fragments I have shored up against my ruin. I've been feeling not quite well all day; my chest aches as though I had an infection, tho' I'm not coughing and I haven't wheezed today, and my head is kinda spacey and my limbs are kinda slow. I have been working, but mostly I just wanna lie on the sofa and read. Also, I put on a long-sleeved T-shirt, of my own free will; I was cold today.

So I have changed my painkiller of choice, on the grounds that paracetamol/acetominophen is a known febrifuge; and as I swallowed pills, I took a little warm glow of pleasure at the thought that I knew the word "febrifuge", and where it comes from, how it's built, who builded it. And its synonym, the antipyretic. Words are a lovely thing, and a very ready help in trouble, a companion and a comfort.

Except my own, except my own, except my own. *snips out another sentence*

Abstemiousness, thy name is unlikelihood

I would just like to point out that it was five o'clock and that was in fact my first hot toddy of the day, although I am officially sick and it is a privilege of sickness to drink medicinally at any time 'twixt dawn and dawn.

In fact I have drunk water and coffee and tea all day ere this, in the interests of keeping my fluids up. Who am I, you ask, and what have I done with me? Quite so. I may be turning Californian.

Also, that first toddy of the day used up the last of the honey. And if my nice honeyman was at the farmers' market this morning, I must have walked right by him unaware. I told you I was sick. I may have to try molasses sugar instead. Dark and true and tender is the North Toddy.

Or maybe I'll just endure; it's almost dinner-time, after all, and I do have to cook tonight. I dunno, though. I've done quite a lot of enduring, this last couple of days, and endurance is like patriotism, it's just never quite enough. The cake don't take the biscuit. Virtue is its own reward, and endurance is a virtue, and... Yeah. That snake will give itself indigestion, before it starves.

Well, that's weird

In other news, I just noticed that all my posts in the last while have been time-stamped at 2.56am on Dec 3rd, despite that not ever being true. I wonder why this is?

Curds and whee!

Seven were the lemons, from their fields of gold.
Four the eggs, and two the yolks were more.
Butter was a stick, with sugar twice by weight.
Nothing more was needed. Curd occurred.

(Why yes, that is my notion of a recipe.)

(We are invited to tea. English tea, I am told. I have made lemon curd - obviously! - and scones. Be glad you can't see the kitchen.)

Now they tell me

What I wanted was preserved ginger in syrup. I scoured the stores, and found none; and wrote it up as yet one more thing not commonly available to Americans; and bought crystallised ginger instead because, y'know, I can work with that. It's not what I wanted, but hey.

Then I came home and found the internet full of recipes, how to preserve your own ginger. Of course you can preserve your own ginger. Why did it never cross my mind? I had seriously-fresh ginger, too, a couple of weeks back, courtesy of nice friends and a farmers' market in the city. Sigh...

In other ginger-related news, there was a news story on the BBC this morning about a man being charged with smuggling garlic into the UK, disguised as ginger root. I may have blinked. Ginger's more expensive than garlic, y'know? But ah - garlic is taxable, where ginger is not. I may have blinked again, before I decided that it must be because you can actually grow garlic in the UK, but it's really not warm enough for ginger*. Taxes to reduce foreign competition with the home-grown? That's all I've got, but I thought the WTO was against such practices...

In other other ginger-related newses, I have bought many dried fruits today, plus the ginger hithertofore mentioned, and I am now going to heat them with spices and alcohols and then leave them to infuse for a week before baking them into a cake. This is a technique I haven't tried before, but it sounds good to me; and I did promise Karen a Christmas cake, so it behooves me to make at least one. At least. There's another less-traditional recipe I'm also terribly tempted by; and my books are in Mexico, so I can't fall back on the old standards, so...

(Also my favourite Xmas pudding recipe is in Mexico, grr, and not going to reach me before Xmas. But that's tomorrow's problem. Today, we cake.)


*This didn't stop me having my protagonists grow ginger as well as garlic in my UK-analogue, in my unwritten Spicefarers fantasy trilogy, where all the magic comes from spices. I do so want to write those books, damn it, but no one's interested...

Spreading the word...

My office-suite-of-choice has a charity campaign for Christmas - you can download a free version of the suite, Softmaker FreeOffice for Windows and Linux from now till Dec 24th, and they'll make a charity donation for every download.

Which would be the perfect opportunity to try their software (an alternative of Microsoft Word? what are you waiting for?) and do a tiny bit of good at the same time.

Details here: http://www.loadandhelp.com/

Browned off

Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon*, but I do get terribly bored, browning a quantity of meat for a stew. Getting a decent colour on every side of every piece takes time; and if you're doing a few pounds and you can only do half a pound at a time without crowding the pan... Yeah. It may even be the single dullest aspect in my repertoire. It wasn't even so bad when we thought we were sealing in the juices, because back then any degree of colour seemed fit for purpose; now that we know that's nonsense and we're all about the Maillard reaction, there's no point doing it at all if you don't hang in there for a decent shade of mahogany.

Next time, I'm thinking I might try tossing it all in a bit of olive oil, spreading it out on a baking sheet and slamming it in a hot oven for ten minutes, see if that works. So much easier than turning every individual cube numerous times...


*I have a terrible temptation to start a magazine called The Streets of Askelon, for obvious reasons**.

**But it's probably been done already.

That's more what I had in mind, really

I have written somewhat north of 2K words today. And biked and shopped and read and cooked and so forth, and am still waiting for the yogi to return for dinner - but I'm working as I wait, because this is all too much fun not to be at it. We are back at the Wimsey tribute on Steampunk!Mars, and I have even foregone SETI to work on this. There is a body in the coach-house, and a stable lad to be bribed with a cigarette and half a crown, and Whose Body? is once again the pertinent question, because...

Ginger: an ongoing love affair

I just peeled the better part of a pound of ginger. With a teaspoon, which is my new favourite method. No cut fingers, and no wasted knobbles; the edge of a spoon will just scrape away the skin and nothing more, and it's easily as quick as a knife, and it'll get into all the awkward angles, and it's fun.

So, yeah. I only went into the kitchen to test the process, and I ended up peeling all the ginger I had. Which is now soaking overnight in water, and tomorrow will be boiled and preserved in syrup, and a few lucky friends may get some for Christmas if I don't totally bollix it up. I've always liked the making-stuff-for-Xmas thing, rather than buying gifts; and in my case of course that translates inevitably into cooking-stuff-for-Xmas.

I do feel fractionally guilty about scattering shreds of ginger-skin all over our freshly-cleaned kitchen, but only fractionally. And I did pick most of them up.

The season of the year

Karen keeps saying ridiculous things like "it's only two weeks till Christmas."

I keep doing ridiculous things like gardening barefoot, in this supposed December.

One of us is doing this wrong, utterly out of synch.

(Actually, I confess, I am late. I should have planted my fava beans last month, if not the month before. But I've put 'em in anyway, just to see what happens.)

In other news, I am having pleasant days but evil dreams. I guess you can only bury stress so long, and it will out somehow. But hell, better this way than the other.

Also, the sugar syrup in which I have enrobed my ginger seems to be crystallising out as it cools. I kinda resent this, as I followed directions almost to the letter. Anyone for ginger glacé...?

Collectivity

I just had occasion to look up the collective noun for vultures. Turns out there's a whole slew of them (what's the collective noun for a group of collective nouns?): wake, committee, venue, kettle or volt, depending whether they're flying or eating or just hangin' out in trees.

I approve of these fine distinctions. Tragically, none of the words available had the resonance I was hoping for, so I dumped the sentence that was half-formed in my head. Happily, though, the Wiki entry also mentioned the rather lazy habit of calling any vulture a geier, which is ornithologically unsound but actually I think quite evocative; so as so often happens, I went looking for one thing and walked away with something else. Serendipity is happenstance dressed up. (And we are sure always to call it research, are we not?)

In other news, I am making a cheapjack version of oxtail marmalade, just to see if I think it might be worth the fancy one. You will be shocked, shocked to learn that I anticipate the answer "Yes". I am in fact committing the cardinal error of theorising ahead of my data. Still, I will be sure always to call it research, so my back's covered.

This is the kind of cooking that I love: wandering through to the kitchen over the course of a long afternoon, chopping and stirring and drifting away again, under no pressure to produce anything on time or even at all. It's cooking for the process, not to put a meal on the table. Murmur it softly, but sometimes that's the kind of writing I prefer, too: with no thought for publication or readership, just working to get it right. It's why I have things around that I've been working on for a decade and never shown the light of day.