One Month Update

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Kristin

It’s been 5 weeks since I officially started my new job as a full-time writer. What have I learned since then?

(1) Distractions are everywhere. Here’s one.

Still Life With Black Walnut

I went for a morning run/walk, and found these on the ground underneath a tree along the bike path. Although I’ve labeled them in the picture as black walnuts, my dad thinks they might actually be butternuts, from the way I described them to him. Butternuts are sometimes called “white walnuts”.

Doesn't that look walnutty to you?

Now that I know what to look for, I’ve found a bunch more trees. The nuts look like green tennis balls. Some of them are falling off the trees, but if you look up, you can see a lot more up in the branches. I’d never seen one before, so of course once I got it home I had to cut and then smash it open to look inside. When you first cut into the skin around the walnut (which is like the pit), the cut surface is green, but it soon turns brownish-black on exposure to air. Back in olden days, people used to use these husks to dye their clothes. I ended up dyeing the cutting board (I also dented it from smashing at the walnut with a meat cleaver. The shells are very thick and hard!). And my palms and fingernails. The brown spots are mostly faded from my skin, a week later, but it still looks like I haven’t cleaned under my fingernails in a few days.

Oh. I was supposed to be talking about writing. Right.

(2) There aren’t as many hours in a day as you think there are.

I had all these fantasies about how much free time I’d have once I was a full-time writer. I was going to spend 7 hours every weekday working at my computer (6 hours writing, 1 hour blogging and/or reading other writers’ blogs), an hour a day reading, 8 hours a night sleeping, and still have all the time I wanted for exercising, cooking, reading cookbooks, spending time with Donald and friends, staying caught up on my email … perhaps I’d even have time to take up new hobbies, like gardening, or soapmaking.

I sometimes manage to spend 7 hours a day writing or doing writing-related work, and an hour reading, and I’m getting better at it. I’ve also been sleeping more than I used to, and getting exercise most days. Cooking more, for sure. (I like cooking as much as I like writing. More, sometimes.) But I’ve certainly had to adjust my expectations as to how much additional free time I was going to have.

(3) It’s possible to spend 6 hours trying to work on a story without actually writing anything.

Most writers seem to set productivity goals for themselves in terms of number of words written. I don’t find this particularly helpful, for me. I’m often a very slow writer. I’m also rather unrealistic in the expectations I set for myself, in writing and in other things. If I expected myself to write, say, 2000 words a day, some days I wouldn’t be finished until midnight. (Other days I’d be finished by noon, and when I’m having a good day, and I know where the story’s going, it seems to make more sense to ride the productivity wave for the rest of the day. Why stop at 2000 words when I can write another 2000?)

On the other hand, since the daily goals I set for myself are “hours spent” not “words written”, it’s a little too easy for me to spend 5 hours clicking through Wikipedia and calling it “research”. Of course, I’m then consumed by guilt and self-loathing for the rest of the day, and Donald has to reassure me that his love for me is not based on my daily word count.

Today I wrote about 300 words over 6 hours. I did a lot of “research”, though. Ask me about European polecats.

(4) When you don’t meet your daily productivity goals by bedtime, it’s better to go to bed and remember that tomorrow’s a new day.

Initially, if I hadn’t spent enough time working by the end of the day, I’d stay up later. Unfortunately, Donald has a day job, so the alarm still goes off at the same time the next morning. And I’m trying to get by without being addicted to caffeine. (I think using caffeine to manage your sleep deprivation is a losing battle, anyway, though I still sometimes fall into the trap. It works for a few weeks, but only until you build up a physical tolerance to the amount you’re using, and at a certain level of sleep deprivation there’s just not enough coffee in the world.) After too many unproductive mornings trying to write new material while dozing off at the computer, I decided that if I hadn’t gotten enough work done by the end of the day, I just had to let it go.

(5) You’ll never be happy with the number of stories and/or chapters you finish.

In my first month as a full-time writer, I’ve finished two novel chapters, a novella (short novel), a novelette (long short story), and a short story. The short story I did from start to finish in the last month. The novelette and novel chapters were mostly written in the last month (at least two-thirds of each). The novella was mostly done, but I added a few thousand words to wrap it up. This is nowhere near what I’d hoped to accomplish, which was more on the order of two novel chapters and a new short story every 2 weeks. But it’s important for me to remember that, in the past three years, trying to write in my spare time while holding down a full-time job, I managed to write and finish 2 novelettes and 1 short story. I did spend a lot of that time working on the novella that I didn’t finish until recently, and editing/revising stories I’d already written so that I could submit them to magazines. Still. I have to keep reminding myself that I really am getting a lot more writing done now that I’m doing it full-time. It’s not nearly as much as some of my friends manage to accomplish even with full-time jobs. But … I’m not them. Maybe I’ll improve, maybe I won’t. One thing is certain: guilt gets you nowhere. Except feeling bad.

(6) Variety is good. Have several different projects to work on, so that if one isn’t going so well, you don’t feel like you had an entirely unproductive week.

Somewhere on the internet, I read that “All advice is autobiographical.”  A lot of what I’ve learned for me isn’t helpful for other writers.

My week goes something like this:

Monday–Work on a new short story.
Tuesday–Find new places to send any stories that have gotten rejected in the last week. Revise and edit stories I’ve already written (or old stories that I’ve decided suck so badly I have to rewrite them from the ground up).
Wednesday–Work on my novel.
Thursday–Novel again.
Friday–Critique stories for writers group, or for friends. Check market listings and see which magazines have opened or closed for submission, or if there are new magazines coming out that sound interesting. Work on website. Other miscellaneous stuff that’s not actually writing, but still needs to get done.

This can vary from week to week, especially if I decide to take a day off. Also, since I’m currently doing my grocery shopping on Tuesday afternoon to fit in with my CSA vegetable pick-up, I usually end up doing a lot of my Tuesday work on Saturday. (I might switch my grocery shopping day back to Saturday once the CSA ends in late October, though it is kind of nice not to have to deal with crowds and/or traffic at the grocery stores.)

Sunday’s usually my day off, at least that’s the plan right now. We’ll see how consistent I can be with that.

I’m definitely enjoying this new adventure! It can be stressful and frustrating, but so far it’s the best job I’ve ever had. Even though I’m not really getting paid for it. Yet. 🙂

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Tropical storm Irene (was Hurricane Irene)

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Kristin

Not much damage at our place from yesterday’s storm. A few small branches snapped off of trees (and I do mean small; I was debating whether to call them branches or twigs). Fallen leaves, some nuts from the hickory/walnut thing overhanging our backyard. No electrical outages, not even a blip. I was all worried that the power would go out for 3 days or something, and all the food in our fridge and freezer would spoil, so I was experimenting with all these complicated schemes involving turning the fridge/freezer temperature up to maximum cold (our fridge doesn’t have separate controls for the two compartments) to keep things cold longer, freezing big containers of water and blue ice packs so I could turn the fridge into an icebox if the power went out. And so on. Turned out none of it was necessary, and all I managed to do was ruin a bunch of the vegetables I had in there. (Donald wasn’t actually too disappointed by the loss of the large head of CSA romaine lettuce.) Whoever says that you should turn your fridge to maximum cold if you’re worried about the power going out is an idiot. Either that, or they’re not into fresh vegetables all that much. Or they have a higher-quality fridge that won’t freeze their lettuce solid on maximum power. Whatever, don’t try this at home!

There was a lot of damage in other parts of the Boston area, though. Trees down on sidewalks, crushing cars, even going through the roof in at least one case. The bike path west of here was blocked by a fallen tree, near the Trader Joe’s. And it looks like Vermont was hit terribly hard, with massive flooding and road/bridge damage.

We feel very thankful that we got off so easily, but sad that others didn’t.

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How to make paneer

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Kristin

On Wednesday, I made cheese for the first time, and documented the process with my trusty digital camera.

I used the paneer recipe on page 297 of Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. You need 2 quarts of milk, 3-4 tablespoons strained lemon juice, a large pot, a large spoon to stir the milk with as it heats, cheesecloth, a colander, and something to weight the cheese with as you press it.

First, you put the milk in a pot and heat it to a vigorous boil over high heat. Make sure to use a pretty big pot. I used a 6 quart stockpot. The milk foams a lot as it starts to boil, and if you aren’t careful, it will foam over the edge and you’ll have an awful mess to clean up. (This did not happen to me, but it did foam quite a lot, even in a 6 quart pot. I was glad I didn’t try to use a smaller pot.) Stir the milk often as it heats, so the bottom and sides don’t burn.

Once the milk has boiled, turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice. I used just a smidge under 3 tablespoons, because that’s what I got out of 1 lemon, after straining the squeezed juice through a tea strainer. The recipe said you might have to use an extra tablespoon, but I didn’t. It also said you might have to heat the mixture on low heat for half a minute or so to get it to curdle, but mine curdled almost immediately, once I’d mixed in the juice. What you’re looking for is that the solid part of the milk (the curds) will separate out from the liquid (the whey), first in little tiny globules, then in larger chunks. (Who can avoid thinking of Miss Muffett at a time like this?)

After adding the lemon juice. Appetizing, huh?

Then you pour it into a colander lined with cheesecloth. I wasn’t sure how much cheesecloth to use. The recipe said several layers. I took 3 long strips of cheesecloth that I unfolded from the piece of cardboard in the middle of the package. I used about 1 1/2 packages.

I worried that I might have used too much cheesecloth. I'm still not sure.

After most of the liquid has drained away, lift up the cheesecloth around the curds and pick up the whole thing like a bag. With your hands, keeping the curds inside the little cheesecloth bag, squeeze out as much liquid as you can. This is where I wondered if I had used too much cheesecloth. I felt that if I had used a little less, maybe only 2 strips instead of 3, I would have been able to squeeze out more water. I thought the texture of the finished cheese was maybe a little soft. On the other hand, I’m not sure the 2 strips would have enfolded all the cheese curd properly, and some of it might have gooped out around the edges. I guess if I try this again, I might try 2 strips, and see what happens.

Here’s what it looks like after you’ve squeezed the water out. According to the Moosewood recipe I was using, this stage is called chenna, and is a soft cheese that is often used in Indian sweets.

After squeezing out as much liquid as possible

Next, keeping the cloth wrapped around the cheese, squish and/or pat it into a sort of flat block. The recipe said 5″ x 5″ or 4″ x 6″. Mine was more like 5″ x 6″, but close enough.

Next, you put it back in the colander and put a heavy weight on top to press it into paneer cheese. I had a bit of trouble with this step, because the colander I was using was too narrow to fit in any weight that would cover the whole surface of my cheese. You want the whole cheese to be covered, or the edges won’t get pressed (they’ll probably be a bit crumbly no matter what you do). I ended up switching out the original colander for the drainer part of my salad spinner. I wasn’t quite as happy about this, because I’m not sure the drain holes are really elevated far enough off the surface below to allow the liquid being squeezed out to escape properly. But it was the best I could do. I filled a 4 quart pot with water and put that on top as the weight.

You can see the overhang of the roof outside reflected in the water

The recipe says to press it for 30-60 minutes, and that the longer you press it, the firmer it will be. I let it go about 70 minutes. Here’s what it looked like, after being unwrapped.

Here's how much you get

I rinsed out the cheesecloths under running water and hung them out to dry, planning to wash them properly this weekend when I do laundry. I didn’t want to throw them out, because I bought one of the packs at the grocery store and it was kind of expensive (at least for such a small amount of cloth).

I hope everything I use these for doesn't taste like spoiled milk

That’s it! I wanted to cook something with the paneer, so I cut it up into small cubes.

It’s kind of amazing to think that this is all the cheese you get from 2 quarts of milk, isn’t it? With harder cheeses like cheddar and Parmesan, where you do a more effective job of squishing out the whey, the yield is even lower.

Two cups of cheese cubes from two quarts of milk

I used the paneer to make the Spiced Paneer on page 351 of Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special. Cubes of paneer sauteed in oil with cumin, cayenne, cardamom, turmeric, salt, and a bit of yogurt to help the spices stick to the cheese. It was very tasty! The paneer went into a salad for dinner that night (Spinach with Cilantro-Cashew Dressing, page 289 of the aforementioned book). I used the famous baby spinach that I had worried might have been squished under my corn, and a tomato from the 4 1/2 pound box of CSA tomatoes I received this week.

The final product

The paneer did crumble apart a bit as I cooked it, especially the edge pieces, and the texture was kind of soft, but it firmed up nicely in the fridge.

I did taste the paneer before cooking it with spices, and it was very mild, but definitely tasted like cheese. I’m wondering if this might be a good substitute for the sort of cheese curds they use in Canada (and which are impossible to find here) to make poutine. Next time I have leftover gravy, I’ll have to find out!

I was surprised by how easy it was to make the paneer. The whole process (not including the hour of pressing) took less than 45 minutes, including clean-up. And that’s 45 minutes in real time, not Rachael Ray time!

Posted in Cooking, Food and drink | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

More CSA complaints

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Kristin

Um.  Can you guys try not to put the corn on the cob on top of the baby spinach next time?  I swear, Wilson Farm has the worst grocery baggers on the planet (I’ve lost track of how many peaches, plums and nectarines they’ve ruined), and apparently the same people are putting the CSA shares into the baskets.

We finally got a decent amount of tomatoes.  For a few weeks, we’d been getting 2 a week.  This week we got 16.  Donald is a little disappointed that we still got the same massive amount of zucchini and summer squash, though.  And lettuce is back, after a lovely 2-week lettuce hiatus.  I’m sort of disappointed that heirloom tomatoes are in full swing, and we only got the most basic, boring tomatoes they grow at Wilson Farm.  But I can sort of understand.  The heirloom ones tend to be more susceptible to splitting and cracking, especially around the stem, and once that happens they go bad pretty quickly.  If we got 16 large heirloom tomatoes, we’d have to eat nothing but for a couple of days so that they didn’t rot before we got to them.  And then we’d have no tomatoes left for the rest of the week.  Also, even basic, boring tomatoes are pretty tasty in August, when they’re locally grown (not the tasteless ones that they pick green in California and blow ethylene gas over to sort of ripen them before they put them out on the shelf in your Massachusetts grocery store).

For dinner tonight, I made Mediterranean couscous salad (with tomatoes and zucchini, as well as other vegetables), tomato and mozzarella salad with basil, and boiled corn on the cob (with lime-cilantro butter).  Fresh local raspberries from our CSA share for dessert (even though Donald was eyeing the new cherries I’d bought; I told him we had to eat the raspberries first, though, because they’re more perishable).  Everything was yummy, though Donald opted out of the couscous salad because of the measly 1 cup of diced zucchini I’d added, and had leftover pork tenderloin with figs from last night instead.

Posted in Complaining about things, Cooking, Food and drink | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Childhood cookbook memories

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Kristin

Last weekend, Donald and I were in Nova Scotia for my 20-year highschool reunion. It was a lot of fun! I attended a tiny highschool in rural Nova Scotia, and our graduating class was somewhere between 40 and 45 students. So there wasn’t anyone in my class that I didn’t know; although, embarrassingly, I had trouble recognizing some people at the reunion. Not as many people made it for the 20-year reunion as for the 10, but it was still great to see everyone who showed up.

Never mind that, though! I’m sure you’re all dying to hear about the cookbooks I acquired on my trip.

My parents are thinking of moving again (for the 3rd time since I graduated from highschool), so when I was there, my mom had been going through all the stuff she’s accumulated over the years and deciding what she really wanted and what she was going to try to sell in a yard sale.  She had a big box of cookbooks she’d decided she didn’t want anymore, and invited me to go through and see if there was anything I wanted. (Of course, she’s still keeping most of her large cookbook collection; I come by my love of cooking and cookbooks honestly.)

To my horror, she was planning to get rid of this gem from 1970, James Beard’s How to Eat Better for Less Money (a revised edition of an original 1954 publication).  (The dust jacket was long gone by the time I was old enough to start reading cookbooks, so I’ve only ever seen this cover.)  I can’t tell you how many hours I spent poring over this masterpiece as a child.  It had a chapter on cheese, with descriptions of all sorts of cheeses too fancy for us to buy in Nova Scotia in the 1980s (and too expensive for our limited food budget–I think the emphasis is on the “eat better”, not on the “less money”).  There are suggested menus for various occasions (“Summer Terrace Dinner for 6”,  “Winter Brunch for 4”).  There’s even “A helpful supplement on budget wines and spirits” at the end.  I used to fantasize about cooking all the different menus for dinner parties I would have someday (yes, I was an odd child).  I’m not sure how many of the recipes from this book I actually made as a teenager, but there was the notorious granita di caffe that I made for dessert when I was about 14, and that turned my brother, sister and me off coffee for years (I like coffee now, but I still can’t drink iced coffee or eat coffee ice-cream, in memory of that dessert; though I think that the problem was not so much that it was a bad recipe, but that children aged 9-14 who aren’t used to caffeine and suddenly eat a whole bunch of coffee slush drowned in whipped cream are likely to make themselves sick to the stomach, and that’s what happened to us.).

Ah, memories.

The sad thing, though, is that the Suck Fairy appears to have waved her magic wand over this cookbook, because, looking through it, I can’t imagine I’m ever going to make any of these recipes.  They’re not all bad, exactly (though there’s a disturbing section on ways to cook hot dogs); I just think that the recipes that sound decent are pretty close to similar recipes in better cookbooks (like the America’s Test Kitchen ones).  And the wine and spirits section!  Oh dear!  I’m sure the wine section is reasonable, though it’s no longer quite as useful for me to know which vintages of the 1960s will be a good investment for future drinking (unless I want to raid my friend Bob’s cellar).  But how about this tip:

“To serve a superb premium Scotch at low cost, buy six bottles of a low-priced blended Scotch and one bottle of Smith’s Glenlivet or Glenfiddich unblended all-malt Scotch.  Pour the contents of the seven bottles into a container and mix them.  Refill the seven bottles and put on your own label, which might read, ‘John Smith’s Personal Selection.’  We promise you the result will be as good as any $9 Scotch on the market.”

Well, that may be true.  But somehow I don’t think they’re talking about a $9 Scotch in 2011 prices.

A lot of the advice in the book is outdated.  It suggests using “hot-roll” mix to make quick pizza.  Apparently this book was published before you could buy those cardboard tubes of pizza dough at every grocery store.  It warns that shallots are hard to come by, and that you might be able to find them “in foreign markets in most large cities” (try Stop and Shop).  It suggests buying your meat from a knowledgeable neighborhood butcher instead of the grocery store (these days, it seems that you have to live in a large city for there to even be a neighborhood butcher, the decent ones all seem to be pretty high-end and not a place to go to save money, and at a lot of the chains pretending to be neighborhood butchers–like the Meat House in Arlington–you end up having long, frustrating conversations explaining to them where on the animal the cut of meat you want comes from if it’s anything more obscure than a brisket (can they not use Google?)).

It’s sad when a beloved cookbook is cursed by the Suck Fairy (the magical entity who points out to you that the books you loved as a child really aren’t that good).  I’m almost afraid to look too hard for a copy of another out-of-print childhood favorite, The Larousse Treasury of Country Cooking (to be distinguished from the far more famous and not out-of-print Larousse Gastronomique).  This wasn’t one my mother owned, but one I used to borrow from the bookmobile over and over (a bookmobile is what you have, at least what you used to have, when you attend a tiny rural elementary school without much of a library).  I think the bookmobile must have gone to more than just elementary schools, otherwise it had a weirdly high number of cookbooks.  But I digress.

My mother was also getting rid of Fields of Greens: New Vegetarian Recipes From the Celebrated Greens Restaurant.  It looks pretty good, though it’s also a little out of date (1993).  The author keeps telling you that you probably won’t be able to find Meyer lemons if you don’t live in northern California (and then tempting you with recipes that require them–so cruel!).  But they’re pretty common in Boston, when they’re in season.  I mean, they’re common if you shop at Whole Foods or Russo’s or Wilson Farm (i.e., with all the other yuppies).  Maybe not at the Stop & Shop.

I also acquired Great Good Food: Luscious Lower-Fat Cooking, by Julee Rosso (one of the co-authors of The Silver Palate Cookbook).  This one I’m a little more iffy about.  It looks like it has good recipes, but they’re organized by seasonal menu or event rather than ingredient or type, and the seasonal menus are a bit idiosyncratic.  For instance, I just opened the book at random to the Spring chapter and found a menu for “Dinner After Ballooning”.  Apparently the author likes to go up in a hot air balloon in the spring when it’s nice, which is kind of cool, though of course not as cool as if it were a zeppelin and she wore steampunk garb (did I mean cool or dorky?).  Anyway, Herbed Bruschetta, Monkfish Medallions, Baby Zucchini with Pesto, Red-Hot Radishes, and Strawberry Sorbet sound lovely.  But it’s kind of a pain to think, “okay, I need a recipe for monkfish”, and not to be able to turn to a nice, convenient chapter entitled “Fish.”  This might be why this cookbook is apparently out of print, and Fields of Greens is not.

I poked through my mom’s box of craft books that she no longer wanted, too, and didn’t find as many prizes, since I like cooking best.  I did find Parties and Projects for the Holidays (Christmas With Martha Stewart Living), which is mostly crafts, but has some recipes too, for holiday menus.  They’re my favorite sorts of menus to make, the ones where the suggested timeline starts off with “One week before” (i.e., you can’t possibly make all those things in one solid day of cooking alone).  They’re not the favorite menus of friends and family who have to put up with me while I’m cooking, though, since I tend to get just a little bit stressed out (i.e., impossible to put up with) when I’m cooking a long, complex menu.  Of course, Martha Stewart’s book is not just about cooking.  There are also step-by-step instructions for making Christmas ornaments from tinsel made out of real gold and silver.

Finally, although this is a cookbook only in the sense of having recipes, not in the sense of telling you how to make food, I acquired The Complete Soapmaker.  I’m probably not really going to start making my own soap, but it’s one of those things I like to pretend to myself that I’ll have time to do someday (like gardening, knitting, sewing my own clothes, making cheese, brewing beer and wine….).  The book gets very mixed reviews on Amazon; some people say it makes great soap, others say it makes terrible, useless soap.  But the recipes sound cool.  The book does make the mistake of telling you to add water to the lye when you’re mixing it, not the other way around (which is much, much safer).  This error has apparently been corrected in later editions, but since I worked as a chemist for 13 years, I sort of already knew this.  It also seems like a lot of the reviewers on Amazon are inordinately afraid of lye.  I mean, it’s corrosive and can be dangerous, don’t get me wrong.  It’s just that when you’ve worked in the lab with materials that can burst into spontaneous flame upon exposure to moist air (and seen them do it, and had to put out the fire with an extinguisher), lye doesn’t seem so scary anymore.

My sister was quite concerned that I might have gotten our mother’s copy of Your Country Kitchen, but Mom isn’t getting rid of that one yet.  And besides, I already have my own copy of this out-of-print treasure that I picked up at a used bookstore a few years ago.  Despite the fact that this is a British cookbook, many of the recipes are quite good (especially if you have a kitchen scale, since a lot of the quantities are given in weights), and the cheese fondue recipe is my “go-to” version.  So Lisa can have this one, if Mom ever decides she doesn’t want it anymore.

I still want the Purity cookbook, though!

Posted in books, Cooking, Food and drink | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Safety starts at home

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Kristin

It occurred to me today that maybe I shouldn’t be grilling barefoot.  As I poured the glowing coals from the chimney starter onto the grate, and one small coal went flying and landed on the ground, less than a foot from my foot.

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Highland Kitchen

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Kristin

No, this post isn’t about haggis.  Before going to see Cowboys and Aliens the other night at the Somerville Theater, Donald and I went out for dinner at Highland Kitchen.  I’d never eaten there before, but it seemed to get good reviews, particularly for its cocktail menu.

It’s a little out of the way, about a half hour walk from either Porter or Davis, but the 88 bus goes right by the restaurant. Here’s a picture of the apple tree in someone’s front yard along the way, that I resisted the temptation to poach from.

Mmm, apples!

I really liked the restaurant, and can confirm that they serve “real cocktails”. I had the “Rarely Eagle”, with bourbon, St. Germain, lemon juice and orange blossom water, and it was very tasty and not too sweet. For an appetizer, Donald and I shared a serving of grilled artichokes with some dipping sauce. I wasn’t too impressed by these, but I think roasting in a hot oven with olive oil or deep-frying is probably a better preparation for baby artichokes. The grilled ones we had didn’t really have much grilled flavor, and no crispy caramelized bits (which I think you need a good amount of oil for, with artichokes, if you don’t want to just burn them). It was like eating vegetables or something!

I thought my entree–sea bass with roasted potatoes, summer succotash and pinot noir butter–made up for it, though. The fish was perfectly cooked, and the summer succotash (summer squash, lima beans and corn) was a nice complement to the fish. I do think they could have improved the potatoes with a bit more oil and a hotter oven, but then, I’m not really a big proponent of low-fat cooking, and I understand how some people might prefer them just the way they were. And anyway, it’s hard to go wrong with potatoes (unless you mash them–yuck!). Donald had the blackened catfish po’boy sandwich, which came with a huge pile of delicious hand-cut fries, and he said his was good, too (I can attest to the goodness of the fries!).

We were too full for dessert (or popcorn at the movie, for that matter), and there wasn’t anything on the dessert menu that either of us found terribly compelling (though had I been less full, I might have tried the plum shortcake).

Another nice thing, although we didn’t take advantage of it, is that if you want a non-alcoholic cold beverage besides water, you’re not limited to the usual Coke/Sprite/ginger-ale spectrum; they also have a couple of IBC sodas, ginger beer, sparkling limeade, and fresh lemonade.

There’s not a ton of vegetarian options, but they have a vegetarian soup of the day, and one each of the sandwiches and entrees on the regular menu are vegetarian (and, of course, all the desserts). So if your vegetarian friend isn’t too picky (or just wants to eat dessert!), you could probably bring them here.

I heartily recommend this place, and would certainly go back!

Posted in Cocktails, Food and drink, Restaurants | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Cowboys and Aliens – just say no!

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Kristin

Donald and I saw the movie Cowboys and Aliens last night.  You can read Donald’s take on the movie here.  For the record, I don’t think he needs to change the story he’s talking about, because anyone who bothered to see Cowboys and Aliens will have forgotten all about it in a couple of months.

Initially, when Donald suggested we go see this, I wasn’t interested.  I told him he was going to have to agree to see an independent film of my choosing with me as a trade-off, if he wanted me to go.  Then I found out that Daniel Craig was in the movie (Harrison Ford is a little old to be much of a draw for me).  Well!  If he’d told me that right up front.  Although, considering how awful the movie turned out to be, I’m still insisting on the independent film as part of our bargain.

It’s not necessarily a bad premise for a movie, if you like genre stories.  Aliens invade the Wild West.  Could be cool, right?  Unfortunately, the movie trots out every tired Western cliche in the book.  There’s the mysterious stranger who arrives in town, gets into a fight with the obnoxious spoiled son of the rich landowner who runs the town, and is thrown into prison by the sheriff.  There’s the half-Indian sidekick.  There’s the troubled man who can’t forget the Mexican war.  There are two encounters with lawless bandits, and one with Indians.  We finally lost it and burst out laughing (along with half the sparsely-occupied theater) at the hallucinogen-assisted spirit journey with the wise native folk (wait, wasn’t that in Avatar, too?)

I’ve heard similarly bad reports about the latest Three Musketeers remake:  an alternate history steampunk version.

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Low fat, schmow fat!

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Kristin

Just for a change from boiled corn on the cob, I decided to use this week’s corn from my CSA share to make creamed corn for lunch.

A bowl of creamed corn, with fresh corn off the cob and heavy cream. And butter. Because heavy cream just doesn't have enough fat.

It was yummy, though I’m feeling maybe I ought to have a double portion of salad tonight, with no dressing, to make up for it. (In case you’re wondering, I didn’t only eat corn and heavy cream for lunch; I also had leftover Greek vegetable stew and salad (with dressing). And a peach.)

Maybe next time I’ll try the variation with blue cheese and bacon.

On the writing front, not such a good day. I was working on the novel, and only got about 1800 words written. Considering that Donald can write 800 words just in the evening after coming home from a long day at his regular job … well, not so good! This is why I need to be a stay-at-home writer in order to accomplish anything, because I’m so slow. Though today was especially bad. I just wasn’t into it, and in the morning I kept dozing off at my desk. And I didn’t have any caffeine in the house. I took a 20-minute nap, which was probably a better idea anyway, and actually helped a lot. (My theory is that using caffeine to stay awake is like curing a hangover with the hair of the dog; it only prolongs the inevitable.) I did force myself to sit at my desk for 6 hours staring at the file of my novel, though. So discipline was okay, just not inspiration.

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Careful what you wish for!

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Kristin

I’m sure it’s a coincidence, but last week I complained about all the vegetables we were getting each week in our CSA share, and this week we didn’t get as many.  Here’s what we got this week:

1 head red leaf lettuce
2 cucumbers
1 bunch salad onions (3)
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch beets with greens attached
baby beet greens
green beans
6 ears corn
2 yellow summer squash
2 zucchini

Last week we got an extra lettuce (romaine), and more summer squash, and both Romano beans and wax beans instead of regular green beans. We didn’t get beet greens or beets, but we got an eggplant, and some basil.

I suppose this week’s take is a more reasonable amount of food, but now that I’ve been trained to expect ridiculously massive quantities of produce every week, it doesn’t feel like a good deal if we’re getting less.

I’m also a little annoyed that the “full share” people are always getting the special vegetables when the “half share” people like us aren’t. Maybe this is to be expected, but we’ve only gotten kale and Swiss chard once, and the full share people are getting one or the other (or both!) every week. And this week the full share people got tomatoes. Tomatoes! Possibly the most desirable vegetable, and we didn’t get any. Hopefully it’s just that the tomatoes are only starting to come in, and they didn’t have enough for everyone. But I’m certainly not joining this CSA again if I don’t get some tomatoes at some point.

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