throw another bear in the canoe

here's how it goes, it comes to blows.

2009-12-30T13:13:00Z

It's the end of December, which means its nearly New Year's, which means it's time for the Inauthentic Medivnyk recipe one more time.

Happy Holidays!

(Guess what I making today?)

Ukrainian Christmas Cake (sorta)

(Other versions are less fluffy, do not have the yeast, do not have the sour cream/yogurt, do not have the sugar, are less labor-intensive, add fruit or nuts....)

Ingredients:
1 pkg. dry granular yeast
3 tbsp. lukewarm water
1 cup honey (dark buckwheat honey is preferable)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup sour cream (I use whole milk yogurt)
1/2 cup butter
4 eggs separated
3 cups sifted flour (I use half whole wheat and half unbleached)
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp. salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Grease your pan--rectangular cake pan or loaf pan(s).

Proof the yeast. Bring the honey to a boil and cool it slightly. The honey should be warm.

Cream the butter and sugar together with a hand-held mixer until light and creamy. Add egg yolks, one at a time, and continue to beat until all is incorporated, then add the honey and sour cream and continue to mix. Add the yeast to the resultant batter; it's mostly for flavor. *g*

Beat the eggs whites to stiff peak. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt. Fold the flour mixture and the egg whites, alternating, into the cake batter as gently as possible so you do not lose the loft of the meringue.

Slide the batter into the prepared loaf pans. Bake for 45 minutes-1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Give it a little while to set up, then invert pans on wire racks to remove cake and cool. But not too much; it's best warm.

And now I really want to make piroshkis.

But neither they nor medivnyk are really On The Discipline, now are they? And I am, again.

La.

i was stirring my brandy with a nail

2009-12-30T12:49:17Z

Dear Seattlites:

A friend of mine is one of the folks involved in opening a new downtown late-night restaurant in your Fair City. Which debuts tonight! So hie thee to The Night Kitchen. Even though I've never been there, I am pretty sure I can vouch for the place.

Love, Bear

she made up someone to be. she made up somewhere to be from.

2009-12-30T04:00:10Z

Finished my second skein of yarn, which looks almost exactly like the first one.

It's official: plying is the most boring thing ever.

But at least it prevents snacking.

everything that is left they will only plow under

2009-12-30T01:25:41Z

It turns out that "Rexroth's Daughter" is actually pretty easy. At least a cheater version.

Now I just have to convince my brain to sing it in my range rather than Greg's. Because he's really not a soprano.

Today is a rest day.

2009-12-29T12:30:52Z

A very busy rest day.

For anybody who feels like playing, it looks like novel_in_90 is starting up another round on january one. I will be playing: I have Grail to finish.

In a minute here I'm going to shower and dress and put the dog out and then go swim before my massage therapy appointment, and then I'm going to go over the see ashacat and netcurmudgeon and the boys. I will be delivering food and distracting children. I will probably bring my spinning, too, because young Sunil is fascinated by the spindle. I will try not to drop it on the coffee table this time. (Sorry.)

evynrude is coming too, which means I will be touching my guitar for the first time since October. Pray for my friends' ears.

Well, we'll have fun, even if we suck.

Then I get to come home and not do much of anything until tomorrow night. Maybe read. I need to read.

Post-novella ennui in five, four, three--

I'm taking the rest of the year off. That sounds so impressive when I say it that way. *g*

Meanwhile, outside the wind is howling, and it's time I got up and packed my plantation. See you on the other side.

he's not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.

2009-12-29T04:30:03Z

Around 4K today, and that's a draft.

mike, you know i sleep under your desk

2009-12-28T18:07:33Z

708 words on The White City, and the Secrit Project finalized.

I have only two scenes and a transition on The White City left, and I have to go back through and salt in more character bits and clues and red herrings. So close. So close.

This novella is rapidly turning into a novel.

Where the hell is my climactic space battle? Two more goddamned scenes, book. GET ON IT.

It's snowing!

2009-12-28T16:27:07Z

*passes out the tea and cookies*

we apologize for the inconvenience

2009-12-28T15:48:32Z

Due to a massive upswing in bizarre Japanese wedding spam, I have disabled anonymous comments.

openID and livejournal accounts may comment freely.

even the very longest love don't last very long

2009-12-28T15:10:11Z

Today's teacup: violets
Today's tea: Today is a day requiring both blackcurrant tea and salabat, which I made with jasmine green tea. (See below.)

Temperature this morning: 28 degrees

I'm finding myself a little crabby with the NPR story this morning on Louisa May Alcott, which seems a little disingenuous to me in that there's a deal of censure being attached to Alcott's working toward making a living.

Artists, of course, are expected to spend tewnty years learning a craft and art that they will then do just for the love of it. The fact is, yes, most of us will do it just for the love of it.

But we also need to eat.

Alcott grew up in grinding poverty with a fabulously popular but indigent father. The fact that she was concerned with securing a good encome in her adulthood does not make her less of an artist; it makes her an artist like any other.

High-mindedness and a desire for financial stability are not mutually exclusive, you know.

Alcott supported her family and herself with her work. She was an independent woman in an era when that was not common or encouraged. I am not, personally, a big fan of her work (though the ivy story in A Garland for Girls stays with me to this day), but I am a fan of her life.

And I'm pretty sure that the author of Little Women and Hospital Sketches could manage to be both an artist and mercenary at the same time.

Of course, I am a commercial artist myself. If nobody wants to read my books, I don't eat. Fortunately, I do consider accessibility an artistic value (one that I am not particularly good at, but it's nice to have goals) and I don't consider it a value that necessarily lies in opposition to depth of meanng or nuance or ambiguity. The hard trick, of course, is balancing it all. Layers; this is what layers are for.

cristalia has been talking a bunch about Dashiell Hammett lately; I also offer Dennis Lehane as an example. (Mystery has figured out how to do this well; I imagine SFF can pull it off too.)

Both of them, I am pretty sure, earn(ed) a living.

Today I must work on The Secret Project With kylecassidy (also featureing trillian_stars) and The White City. I think part of the problem I am having with The White City is that it is at its heart a very bleak little book, and it ends with a noble sacrifice and a cold wind blowing--and I am a little scared of writing that, because it's so sad. Also, there's the simple logistics of Our Heroes solving the mystery. Which is apparently trickier than it might seem.

La.

Well, blogging doesn't get the writing done. Off we go, avoidant-lass

life is a thump ripe melon, so sweet and such a mess

2009-12-28T01:34:02Z

Item the first: For anybody who thinks they might want a Giant Ridiculous Dogge on their very own, my mom and her partner have a bitch in whelp, and are expecting puppies on the ground in January if all goes well.

You can read thecoughlin's informational post here. If that intrigues you, the Eiledon Briards website is here.

Item the second: Climbed tonight with buymeaclue and TBRE and The Jeff. Did not climb particularly well, mind you, but I did get out there. Better luck on Monday. *g*

don't talk of worlds that never were the end is all that's ever true

2009-12-27T18:49:06Z

Around 600 words on The White City today, and still waiting for it to tell me how it goes. I wrote the last scene (denouement), and the closing sentence, but I'm missing like four scenes that comprise the climax.

It's interesting writing Sebastien in a situation where he is NOT in charge.

Tomorrow is a work day. God damn it. I will have focus and I will get somewhere.

Well, time to stare at it for a while again.

i'm miles from where you are, i lay down on the cold ground

2009-12-27T16:56:11Z

Teacup today: cabbage roses, a gift from ctwriter.
Tea today: Mokalbari East
Temperature this morning: a balmy fiftyish

Sebastien is having a fraught conversation with somebody he's never met before, who knows him uncomfortably well. I have just skipped the climax and am working on the denouement.

ETA: And a very brave neighborhood cat is apparently using our back porch as a base of operations, as there are two Green Bits (TM) on the steps. I wonder if that was the end of our Kitchen Smouse.

it is better to light a candle, etc.

2009-12-27T16:19:09Z

Finished candles.

I really like the blue one.

I should eat something and work for a bit before it's time to go climbing with buymeaclue, The Jeff, and TBRE.

In other news, the rain and warmth came overnight, and now the snow is gone. It was a special delivery, just for Christmas.

i went to it on my knees, just as you said

2009-12-27T13:32:52Z

This is a terrible Sherlock Holmes movie, and kind of silly fun otherwise.

well i told her i was lost and she told me all about the pentecost

2009-12-27T04:04:52Z

Just finished and filed my review of Sherlock Holmes for Tor.com (short version: it was awful and I loved it), and before that, I made some candles. See, I used to commit chandlery fairly often but had fallen out of the habit, and yesterday cristalia mentioned she was thinking of taking it up, which inspired me to break out the wax and crayons.

I'm still staring meaningfully at The White City, trying to figure out how the damed thing works. It would be nice if I could finish it by year's-end. But it all depends on if the story tells me how it ends.

I guess tomorrow I start rereading it again.

It's finally raining out there, and the wind is gusting fiercely, but it's 41 degrees, which seems positively balmly.

and you shall plow and reap and mow

2009-12-26T15:39:05Z

My mom made me a totally awesome pair of pink and purple socks!

I guess now I get to sit and stare and think about how to fix The White City so it works. Maybe I will spin and listen to NPR. That seems a sitting and staring sort of occupation.

So close to the end. So close. Two ot three days' work, if I can just figure out what the work should be.

Meanwhile, today's teacup is one sent to me by stwish, made by his friends at Earthbound Arts (I also have a mermaid and a faerie queene--ornaments--from there, and both are lovely) And today's tea is the last of the crepe faire from Stash--the last crepe faire ever, I suspect, as they've discontinued the flavor.

and the prison priests are decent. my attorney seems sincere.

2009-12-26T05:20:50Z

I have read and edited that which I have written of The White City. And wonder of wonder, I like it. A lot, actually.

And still I have no idea at all how to end it. I mean, I know who the killer is and stuff. But I don't know how to build the climax and a thematic resolution that will make a satisfying finish to the story. Also, I have to go back and put in some more clues who the killer is. Making things feel inevitable and not arbitrary is a significant portion of the storyteller's craft.

I sense a lot of staring and pacing in my life for the next week or so.

"No really. I am working!"

Pursuant to the spinning, I'm thinking again about the stuff we strive to get right in fantasy. So much of the work set in the past, or alternate pasts, gets the details of life so very wrong. People have no trades, or if they do they are desperate to escape them. And actually, people who work with their hands often like what they do. Making stuff, after all, is quite satisfying.

Some authors do this very well--Connie Willis, Barbara Hambly. People work in their books, and the worlds feel real.

Another thing that always seems to fall out of fantasy written by modern authors is how integrated life was. People did not have work and leisure; everything ran together. You sat and spun while someone told stories, or you sang songs and worked the winch, or talked and shucked peas. And good tradesmen were respected in direct proportion to their indispensibility. A village blacksmith or potter is a hard thing to live without.

Our modern emphasis on book learning, I think, creeps in there and corrupts how we talks about other cultures.

even the losers keep a little bit of pride.

2009-12-26T01:15:20Z

My poor nondog.

Still no idea about how to be a dog.

I gave him his holiday dinner, which is canned dog food (he has never had it before) and he's still trying to figure out what to do with it.

He is starting to think it might taste REALLY good, though.

(Technically speaking, it's dessert: he had his regular dinner about an hour ago.)

He does not know how to be a dog, but he is learning. He actually stole something out of the recycling bin the other day to lick, which is a first. It was a chicken broth container.

He's really quite ludicrous, and I love him very much.

then one day i was not alone

2009-12-26T00:17:49Z

Christmas pronounced a success. (My immediate local family--none of us are actually Christians, but we celebrate a secular Christmas anyway, and often these days it even falls on the actual day. It didn't always, because my mom was a hospital employee for 25 years.)(See above, December Non-Denominational Gift-Giving Day.)

We made out first ever Yorkshire puddings, which came out awesome and we were all boggled at just how easy it is. Next time, a little longer in the oven, and we will use a metal muffin tin instead of the silicon muffin cups, because, well, the silicon cups were too slippery and the puddings just levitated themselves out of the cups rather than getting tall. Not enough friction!

(The muffin cups were a gift from truepenny: this was their inaugural run. Thank you!!!)

Here are the socks and the blanket my mom knitted me, because I promised to brag about them.

And here is my first ever hank of yarn, which I gave to my mother. It's "art yarn," which is to say it's not art yarn at all. It just sucks. But hey, it's mine and I made it.

We tried the prime rib recipe from Cook's Illustrated, and came to the conclusion that while it is good, our family ~~recipe~~ process is better. (We were all actually capable of stopping eating after one slice. Which never happens the way we usually do it.) However, their au jus recipe rocked, though next year we're leaving out the wine.

And Yorkshire puddings are a permanent addition. In two years, they'll be an ancient family tradition.

And then I beat the freezing rain home and let the dog out.

Now I'm going to make some tea and put on my wrist braces and go sit under my new blanket and work on The White City, because TBRE is out in the world tonight and I have the whole luxurious house to myself.

Oh, and gotta water the tree.

matociquala @ 2009-12-25T10:43:00

2009-12-25T15:43:37Z

One of my crunched toenails fell off!

And here is the toe it came off, with tiny new infant toenail. (It's the baby toe, which likes to hide under the other toes, but I pulled it out and made it show its face)

Your ew gross for the morning.

"merry christmas, mr. todd."

2009-12-25T02:58:16Z

Your December Non-Denominational Gift-Giving Day Present from the Shadow Unit crew: "On Faith."

Come and get it.

my baby turned around and started up again

2009-12-24T19:45:28Z

It's a December Non-Denominational-Gift-Giving Day miracle! Two much-delayed checks have arrived today, along with a copy of the Russian SF magazine Esli, with truepenny-n-my space pirate story "Boojum" innit.

woot!

And now time to start that haaaaaaaaaaaaaaam. As soon as I find the recipe...

i treated her nice and she followed me home...

2009-12-24T15:54:04Z

...and there was nobody there to tell me that i couldn't keep her.

And this is why the Inauthentic Borscht recipe calls for grating the beets in a clean sink. (I pour boiling water into mine to rinse after I scrub it down, before using it as a food prep surface.

Mmm. Beets.

matociquala @ 2009-12-24T09:21:00

2009-12-24T14:21:52Z

Watching the giant Wookiee muppet dog run around the back yard gives me a very good idea of what the hair movement on a sasquatch would look like.