Wednesday Writing

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 6 Comments

I made it to write in tonight. I used the first few minutes while I waited for my desperately needed Reuben/no bread to arrive, to catch up on my blog interaction. I won’t take you step by step down my worm hole up I ended up at an article entitled How to Build Your Author platform in 10 hours per week. This sounded intriguing. Then I saw this line “After all, the only thing worse than not publishing your book is to publish it and get ignored entirely.” sigh. You’re telling my story, my friend. Strangely enough there were no new flashes of information in this article. I do all that and more (got on a book club and gave a meet the author q&a) and I am still unknown. sigh.

Then I spent way too long looking at the schedule for Norwescon. I was thinking of taking this year off but my sis is coming with my nephew who wants to go, so I’ll do a day with the kiddo.

Then, I ripped off the band-aid. I opened my spy novel. I started rewriting my first chapter. It had been mentioned by more than one reader that my first chapter felt different from the rest of the book. Taking a hard look at it after 2 months away from the text, I have to agree. I got too caught up in weaving in all the fun research I did and it came across as stilted. I have a very conversational writing style. I need to rewrite the chapter to be in line with the chatty casual way the rest of the book reads. So I did it. I started rewriting. I have no idea if it will be any better but it is different. shrug. Only 37 chapters to go. LOL

How about you? How is your writing project going? Are you doing Camp Nano this year?

 

 

Book Review: And Then There Were Nuns

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

I know, I know, I said I was done with cozy mysteries but this one caught me with it’s title. It literally jumped off the shelf while I was at the library browsing on the last date night I had with the hubs. Yes, we are that geeky. But if you have a small child, you know, going to the library without said child, is exciting.

And Then There Were Nuns by Kylie Logan started off pretty good. Not great. Not ooh, this is so well written I can’t put it down, but good enough. This is apparently one of a series, and the “get a new reader caught up” portion was done ok. Not the best I’ve seen but no where near the worst. So I’m reading happily along, or happily enough anyway. And then…

All of a sudden, the head jumping starts. And these odd little extra thoughts, in parentheses in the main character’s thought stream. And I notice whenever something exciting is about to happen, she ends the chapter. Ok, lots of people do that. It gets you to turn the page, go to the next chapter. But you don’t get to see the action. Logan skips it entirely and you find out what happen when the main character is thinking about it or telling someone else what happened. Ugh. Shoot me.

And the mystery is solved with a big SURPRISE! Not surprised, not amused.

℘℘℘ – Almost 3 pages. I don’t know. It’s more than 2, the reasonably good stuff at the start gets it out of 2 page range, but…Fine, it’s readable.

Sunday Sup: Spanish Rice Redux

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments
The original for today’s Sunday Sup comes from a cookbook entitled Eat Smart, Lose Weight. It was a gift. From my mother. Cough, cough, did you just say I was dumb and fat? Cough, cough.
It’s one of those awful books from the days where fat was the devil and eating as many carbs as possible created a nation of diabetics…yeah. I’ve made a few changes to this one.
Spanish Rice Redux
Chop a pound of pork chops, pork sirloin, pork loin, etc (your choice, what do you have on hand) into small cubes. Brown over medium high heat in olive oil in a largish pot.
While that browns, chop 2 small red onions, 2 red bell peppers, and one green zucchini. (I know they only come in green but I like balance.)
Remove the pork from the pot, add a bit more olive oil if needed. Put all the chopped veg in the pot with a teaspoon of minced garlic. Or use a couple of cloves if you’re old fashioned.
Give it 3-5 minutes. Stir a bit too. Let all the veg get softer and a bit of a tan.
Add the meat back.
Add 2 cans diced fire roasted tomatoes, the 15oz cans, or 1 1/2 cans and a fresh tomato if you forgot to buy more canned ones the last time you were at Costco.
Add 2 cups chicken stock and one 16 oz bag of riced cauliflower.
Bring to a simmer, then cover and lower the temp to low.
Simmer 30 minutes. Go take a nap or wash yesterday’s dishes now that your kiddo has finally unloaded the dishwasher.
Give it a good stir. Take the lid off and simmer until it is the dryness you desire. With no additional simmer it will be a bit soupy. I like to give it another 15.
Serve with sliced avocado on top.
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Fiendish Friday: Wildflower

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 6 Comments

I took the kiddo swimming in Berlin. Our hotel had a pool in the basement. Very standard in European hotels. And they tend to be small, like 10 x 3 meter pools, meant for laps.

As I was showering afterwards I found myself thinking about Wildflower. I suppose because the last time I was swimming laps in a European basement pool, I was training for it. Wildflower is a triathlon in California. It’s kind of a nasty one. They have 3 distances, sprint, oly, and half. The half is so harsh it is a qualifier for Iron Man Kona. One of the few halves that is a qualifier.

Anyway, I was doing Team in Training, as a way to escape the ridiculous vacuousness of my wedding. And training had been super fun. I had raised all the funds, including a donation from my doctor when I went to see him for a broken ankle during the training process. LOL. I have made skills.

So come race day, I got down to the staging area so early almost no one else was there, well no participants I knew anyway. The director of our TNT Team had said that our race tags were different from others and that we couldn’t go just by the number, we needed to go to the outside row first, then find our number. Totally clear right? So I get down there, it’s like 530 in the morning, and I go to the outside row, find my number, and set up all my stuff. Then I head off to get coffee, pee, find friends, etc.

When I come back, there are some people, specifically three guys setting up their stuff. Three tall, zero percent body fat, lean muscled guys with really expensive looking equipment. huh. We sort of look at each other for a moment and then the penny drops.

I gulp and say, “I think I’m in the wrong spot.” Two of the guys look away and choke down their laughter, one politely says with a German accent, “I think you might be, yes.”

Nothing like being a 300 plus pound, totally out of your league, first time sprint triathlete in the profession athlete line. Oops.

Apparently it was the other outer row I was supposed to go to.  This is why I firmly believe it never pays to be early. LOL

Sunday Sup: the Hubs liked it

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 3 Comments

I am torn about this recipe. It sounded good. I made some adjustments, made it paleo friendly. And it just did not taste good to me. But the hubs really liked it. And because it photographed really nicely, LOL, I decided I would post this one. (Original Here)

Mongolian Beef “Ramen”

Right off the bat I was confused, because Mongolian Beef is just meat and onions and peppers,  I think this recipe was meant to be Broccoli Beef Ramen. But ok, on we go.

Thinly slice about a pound of any beef that should be sliced cross grain. I used a London Broil but Sirloin steak would work just as well. Thinly slice it against the grain. Coat lightly in tapioca flour or potato flour. Both give a good light coating when skillet fried. In a pinch use any gluten free flour on hand but results may vary a bit.

Heat a skillet (makes sure it has a lid) over medium high and sear your meat, a couple of minutes on each side.

In the mean time, match stick some carrots. I used 3 handfuls of baby carrots. And turn a head of broccoli into florets. You know I used a bag of pre floreted broccoli though. LOL

Pull out the meat and plate to the side.

Lower the heat to medium-medium/low. Add one tablespoon of sesame oil to the pan and a tablespoon of minced garlic. Cook a minute, in the mean time, start your water for Edamame Pasta, or other rice/quinoa/pasta.

Add a cup of chicken stock, 1/2 c tamari, and 2 tbsp honey to the garlic pan. Simmer and let thicken (from the left over flour) for 3 minutes. Add your broccoli and carrots. Cover and simmer 5-7 minutes depending on how crispy you like your veg.

Don’t forget to cook your pasta when the water boils. Edamame takes only 3 minutes so your timing might be slightly off if you use something with a longer cook time.

When the veg are ready, add the beef and pasta to the pan, stir to combine. Serve with sesame seeds sprinkled on top if you have them to hand. monbeef

 

Fiendish Friday: Berlin

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 3 Comments

So after Amsterdam we went to Berlin. I liked it a lot. Then again no one was smoking marajuana on every street. Things always look rosier when you aren’t going to vomit any second. That said, Berlin is a total foody town. Gluten free was everywhere, which makes it so easy to feed the kiddo and myself. Their public transit system was awesome as well. Even at peak travel times you could still find standing room on every train we needed.

Highlights:
Berlin Zoo, totally fab! I like zoos. Visit them everywhere I go. This is top 5 easily, maybe top 3. They put some serious time and effort into designing the enclosures for the animals both from the perspective of what the animal needs and viewing for people. Example: The Mountain Goat enclosure had a 50 foot high mountain in it for them to climb. I have never seen anything like that for goats. Plus their kids’ playground was way cool. Tons of things that never happen in the US for safety reasons. Snort.

Allied Museum: Museum dedicated to the Berlin Airlift. They have a plane from the airlift on the grounds which you can go into, if you’re there at the right time of year. We weren’t but it was still way cool. No barriers. So I got to walk under that huge beautiful plane. sigh. Lovely.

churchDDR Museum: hands on, interactive museum about life in East Berlin when the wall was up. You can ever “drive” the one car that was available in East Berlin in a 3D virtual street reconstruction.
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Yes, I went to a church. The thing is, this one got bombed in the war and rather than demolish and rebuild it, they restored it just enough to keep it from falling down as a memorial to those who died in the war. It looks amazing as it is.

 

 

Jute Backeri: Gluten free bakery. So good. Seriously. It might have been better than Kyra’s. Maybe. LOL.

Things that made me sad:thewall

“The Wall.” There is a mile long stretch of the wall called the East Side Gallery. Artists have been invited to paint murals regarding their experiences in the DDR. Half the strip is protected by a fence. The other half is tagged to hell with graffiti. It made me very sad that they have to protect “The Wall” with a wall.

 

Checkpoint Charlie: Oh dear god. It’s all reproduction. And it’s like Time’s Square meets bad Hollywood repro. Picture the scene, KFC on the left, McDonalds on the right. CC in the middle, complete with Germans pretending to be American soldiers in uniform, manning the checkpoint. Shoot me now. The real stuff is in the Allied Museum.

The kiddo had a brief desire to move to Berlin. I think he liked all the gluten free food availability. The fact that we never got stuck in traffic. And the amazing museums. He was particularly taken with the Pergamon and it’s amazing set up of the Ishtar Gate. He and his dad are currently building one in MineCraft. LOL

Book Review: Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d

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While on vaca I was enjoying tearing through almost a book a day. I just had free time. A seven year old can only sight see so many hours a day, which translated nicely into down time for mom as there was no house to clean, no books to edit, no classes to prepare for. So I READ. I was super excited to see a new Flavia de Luce book from Alan Bradley available for download. I’ve read the whole series.

I am torn by this book. I wanted to like this book. I was predisposed to like it, as I adored the last 7 or 8. But this one just missed the mark for me. Flavia is back in the UK. She is growing up, but you don’t see the growth, she is just completely different than she has been in previous books and her inner monologue tells you this is growth. wrinkles nose. She lost a lot of her charm to be frank.

Then in the actual mystery, she is super dense about certain things that are glaringly obvious and then in the last ten pages she pulls off a magical, “this is how it was done.” I am not really a fan of that. And I don’t remember the previous Flavia books being that way.

The final nail in the coffin for me I won’t tell here as it gives away too much but it was unnecessarily harsh.

℘℘℘ – Three Pages, I finished it. Maybe I’m being too critical. But if I separate out the rest of the books in the series and just judge this one by itself, I probably wouldn’t have finished it. It just had too many issues for me. And I desperately missed the Flavia of old. Impetuous, bold, honest, and charming in the way children are when they haven’t learned not to say certain things and they feel things fully. sigh. I’ll read the next one just to see if the author brings her back, that Flavia.

Sunday Sup: Budha Bowl Reboot

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I fell down a Delish worm hole recently, watching videos for countless meals that I thought would be way better with a few tweaks towards Paleo. So I made some.

Budha Bowl Reboot (If you want the original Delish Budha Bowl it’s here.)

Preheat your oven to 425. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Chop 2 medium sweet potatoes into small cubes. Dice one medium red onion. Throw both on the pan and coat with Olive Oil. I use one of those handy spray cans of olive oil. Add a grind or two of sea salt. Roast for 25-30 minutes. You want both soft and caramelized.

In the mean time….make your sauce.

2 tbsp peanut butter, you can use sun butter if you are anti peanut but I wouldn’t recommend almond butter, it gives a different flavor. 1 tbsp honey. 3 tbsp rice wine vinegar. 1 teaspoon minced garlic. 2 tbsp Tamari, gluten-free. Stir until well incorporated. Add 1-2 tbsp sesame oil, depending on how much you like the flavor and then balance with 1-2 tbsp olive oil. Total 3 tbsp oil. Whisk like mad until it emulsifies.

You could grill your own chicken breast. You could. But why bother when you can buy pre grilled sliced chicken. smiles. Chop that up.

I stirred my potatoes and onion a few times and added a bit more olive oil spray. In the last few minutes before they were done, I sautéed riced cauliflower in butter. The secret to getting a good rich flavor is lots of butter. Or ghee, fine, use ghee. But you need it to make the cauliflower not taste like cauliflower. I cook until it picks up a pinch of brown color. And buy the pre riced cauliflower, save yourself the effort and waste of food processing it. It doesn’t all rice when you do it that way and then after you have to wash the food processor.

Ready for assembly: riced cauliflower in the bottom, then chicken, fresh baby spinach, and sweet potato/onion on top. Drizzle the dressing over the whole mess and yum!img_20170226_172813

Fiendish Friday: Amsterdam

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 7 Comments

So we just got back from a couple weeks abroad, so you’ll get a couple Fiendish Fridays that might be more like travel reviews. Deal with it. smiles.

We landed in Amsterdam, the kiddo and I. He had a full night’s sleep on the plane and I had none. We had a four seat row to ourselves, so I showed him how to stretch out on three of those seats and still keep his seat belt buckled. But three seats weren’t quite enough for him and every time I dozed off upright, he would hit me trying to get half my seat as well. sigh.

The hubs told me he cleared both our common credit card for international travel but mine didn’t work when we landed and the 150 Euro he gave me before he left turned out to be 130 sheckles and 20 Euro. Good thing I never depend on a man to take care of me. LOL. I had called my own CC company and got international clearance on my card, so we weren’t totally screwed.

We went to the zoo the first day, sunlight to reset out clocks. I was sadly disappointed. The last time I was at the Amsterdam zoo it was very enjoyable. No idiot controls. Animals right there. They fed the lions live rabbits for a chase. Not anymore. Now it’s all controlled. Very Americanized. Very disappointing. But the kiddo had fun on the play ground.

vangoghmuseum-s0005v1962-800
Photo Courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum

Next day, we met the hubs for coffee. Then took a canal boat tour with my uncle in law.
Kiddo loved the Van Gogh museum. They get high marks for having a scavenger hunt for kids. The kiddo won a postcard with the Van Gogh painting of his choice. I was quite surprised by his choice. The Potato Eaters. Very unexpected.

We capped the day with an educational program and tour of the Anne Frank house. Kiddo was not impressed. It’s so hard to get him to grasp the impact of WWII.

Friday the kiddo was sick. He had a nasty cough and I got to go to a pharmacy and explain in Dutch, which I don’t speak, what I needed medication wise for him. LOL. It worked out ok. Although I was a bit worried with the big green leaf on the front of the box. I asked the hubs about it when we finally got to see him and he told me it wasn’t pot laced cough syrup. Whew. LOL

All in all, Ams was disappointing. We walked most everywhere because it’s not that big. But literally every block someone was smoking marajuana on the street. The smell of second hand weed makes me nauseous. So I spent four days trying not to vomit. Bleh. I know, I know the ridiculousness of a drug prescribed to help with nausea making me nauseous is not lost on me.

Oh, and the kiddo apparently inherited my hubs terrible inability to adjust to time zones. He woke me at 2A every day, saying he couldn’t sleep. I’d give him half a melatonin and he would go back to sleep, but I wouldn’t sigh.

A special note on Schiphol airport. It sucks. 6 security lines, four of which to check our passports. One of them, we had a passport check and interview, walked 20 feet down a hallway and stood in another line for a passport check and interview. I shit you not.

Book Review: The Crossing PLaces

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

I reviewed The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths a few weeks ago, liked it a lot. I grabbed the follow up to that book, Smoke and Mirrors, shortly thereafter and it was awesome. So of course I grabbed the first book in her Ruth Galloway Mystery series, The Crossing Places.

I am less enthusiastic about this series. It is still very well written and I quite like the lead character. Ruth Galloway is independent, intelligent, and a total introvert. She is a professional forensic archaeologist who teaches at Uni. She has an Indiana Jones poster in her office for the humor of it. When the book starts she is asked to evaluate some recently found bones for the police. This is a new direction for her. As the book goes on she finds lots of parallels between what an archaeologist does and a detective’s job.

It’s slower moving than the Magic Men series. And it is a bit darker. I liked the feel, the slow, creepy, languid pace. Although, I did know who done it before Griffiths revealed it. Maybe that’s why I am less enthused.

On the other hand I downloaded the next 2 books in the series for my upcoming trip.

℘℘℘℘ – A sold four pages. I can’t wait to see where the series develops.