Another White Mountain adventure

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Kristin

I’ve been lax in blogging for a while, so I have a lot to catch up on. It would take a ridiculously long time to write about everything I’ve been up to in the last few weeks (which, sadly, hasn’t included much writing), and I’m not sure even my mom is sufficiently interested in my life to read the ridiculously long post that would result. So, a little at a time.

The last weekend in August, Donald and I went backpacking in the New Hampshire White Mountains. Backpacking being distinct from car camping, of course, in that you have to carry everything you need to a campsite in the woods, instead of being able to just drive up to one and pitch your tent. I used to go backpacking quite a lot, but I think this was the first time I’d gone in almost 5 years. Donald hadn’t gone since he was a Boy Scout, so he had to rent a backpack, sleeping bag, and camping mattress. Which made it a more expensive trip than you might think. Especially since, despite his Y chromosome, he wasn’t able to resist the lure of impulse shopping at REI when he picked up the equipment, and ended up with some new hiking clothes as well (in which he looks very cute, I might add).

We decided to use the Nauman tent platforms, next to the Mizpah Spring hut, as our base of operations for the weekend. This is just a little southwest of Mt Washington, the tallest peak in New Hampshire. It’s actually just a little below a ridge of mountains that extends south from Washington: Monroe, Eisenhower, Pierce and Jackson–known as the Southern Presidentials. The western slope of this ridge goes down to Crawford Notch, one of the main north-south routes for cars and trucks through the White Mountains; the eastern slope descends steeply into the Dry River valley. We chose Nauman tentsite because it was less than a 3-hour hike from the parking lot, but also reasonably close to some interesting hiking. We figured we could hike up to the tentsite on Friday, sleep there on Friday night, then leave the bulk of our equipment at the tentsite on Saturday while we did a hike up along the aforementioned Southern Presidentials. Sunday we could hike back out, and drive back to Boston.

We left quite early on Friday morning, and it was a good thing, because when we got to the parking lot around 10:30 or so, it was already pretty full. Nonetheless, we found a spot along the edge, shouldered our packs, and started uphill.

I firmly believe that anyone who plans to write epic fantasy novels that include long treks through the wilderness needs to go backpacking a few times, in order to begin to understand what it’s like to have to carry everything you need on your back. And then imagine doing it without waterproof-breathable clothing, or high-tech lightweight gear. Or ziploc bags. For fantasy writing research, it’s actually best, in fact, to go backpacking in the rain. Fortunately, we didn’t have the chance to carry out that level of research on this trip!

We reached the Nauman tentsite early that afternoon, and again, it was a good thing we left as early as we did from Boston. We had no trouble finding a platform, but I think they just about filled up that night, and on Saturday night they had to put hikers in the overflow area.

Nauman was a pretty good place to camp. Since it’s next to a hut, we didn’t actually need the water purifier we’d brought, and could get free, purified water from inside the hut. They have an outhouse, so you don’t have to dig little holes in the woods. And they have sturdy metal boxes to put your food in, to keep the bears away (we didn’t see any bears at all that weekend, though we did see a mouse hanging around the food storage area). They charge $8 per person per night, and there’s a caretaker to keep an eye on things, and maintain the composting toilet (which he said is the worst job on the planet).

I always shy away from the expensive bags of camping food you can buy at REI or similar stores, and just bring food from the regular grocery store. On Friday night, we had steak, accompanied by couscous and cherry tomatoes. All the other campers were very jealous of our steak, as they smelled it cooking. It might seem like a bad idea to bring raw meat where there’s no refrigeration, but if you freeze the steak overnight before you leave, it will be just thawed after spending the day in your backpack. It’s probably only a good idea to do this for the first night of the trip, though. Also, it is kind of messy, because you want to do a good job of wiping up any raw meat juice (also known as blood) that might spill out and attract bears, and of course you have to make sure the meat is wrapped well in several layers of plastic…. Anyway, it is tasty, and a good way to make everyone else who’s eating those expensive bags of mediocre backpacking food very jealous.

Saturday morning, we set off for our hike. It wasn’t very hot, the skies were clear, and it promised to be a lovely day for hiking. We still took plenty of warm clothing though, just in case. It’s always a good idea, when planning to hike above treeline in New Hampshire, to be prepared for anything from 80 degrees Fahrenheit, to a blizzard. Even in the summer. Hypothermia is one of the leading causes of death among hikers in this region (the other is being struck by lightning).

Nauman is just below the ridge between Mts Pierce and Jackson, so our plan was to hike up to the ridge, then head north over Pierce, Eisenhower and Monroe, enjoying the great views. Then back.

The view south from Mt Pierce

Here’s a picture from the top of Mt Pierce, looking south towards Mt Jackson and beyond. As you can see, it still looks like a great day for hiking. However, looking north, as the elevations of the mountains we were planning to hike over got higher, there was a lot more cloud cover than we’d expected.

That's not a silly grin on my face, I'm gritting my teeth against the cold wind!

By the time we got to Eisenhower, it was so cold and cloudy (and windy!) that we even wondered whether it would be safe to continue. But the weather forecast wasn’t calling for rain, so thunderstorms seemed unlikely. (Donald was able to get cell phone reception on the top of Eisenhower, so we could check the forecast on his iPhone. Ah, wilderness!)

Panoramic views from the summit of Mt Eisenhower

After a snack, and enjoying the panoramic views from the summit of Mt Eisenhower (ie, staring into the interior of a thick gray cloud), we started off for Monroe. And that mountain kicked our butts! The thing about going from Eisenhower to Monroe is that there’s this one really steep section that you think is the last ascent to the summit. Then you get to the top of that, and you see a LONG stretch of path ahead of you and, quite far in the distance, the actual summit of Monroe. (The false summit is called Mt Franklin, but it doesn’t really count as one of NH’s 4000-foot peaks, because it’s not at least “200 ft. above the low point of its connecting ridge with a higher neighbor.”) Not only that, Monroe is a double mountain, so there are two peaks you have to climb over in order to actually have summitted the mountain.

From the top of the second (and higher) peak of Monroe, you can finally see Lakes of the Clouds hut, just below the summit of Mt Washington. When we got there, the clouds had finally lifted from Monroe and most of the ridge, but the top of Washington was still shrouded. However, just after turning around to go back to our tentsite (after a potty break down at the hut), we looked back, and saw that the last of the clouds were finally melting away.

The last of the clouds lifting from the summit of Mt Washington

Fortunately, on the return trip, we didn’t need to climb over Monroe and Eisenhower again, though we did need to go back up and over Pierce (and Franklin, for that matter). The entire hike for Saturday was 9 1/2 miles, and it took us 8 1/2 hours (including breaks). 5 1/2 hours there, and 3 hours back.

Here’s a picture, looking back along the ridge from Mt Pierce, all the way to Washington (which we did NOT attempt to climb that day).

A look back at what we've accomplished

The sense of accomplishment I feel in looking at this picture is, unfortunately, somewhat diminished by the fact that the tentsite caretaker can make the trip that took us 5 1/2 hours in 1 1/2. Hmm. Well, neither Donald nor I claims to be in the best shape these days….

We were pretty glad to see this sight.

Our campsite, back at the Nauman tent platforms

I actually overexerted myself during the hike. I was having a lot of trouble, earlier in the day, with my hat, because the shorter layers of my hair aren’t long enough to stay in a ponytail or braid, and they kept coming loose and sticking against my face or neck. So eventually I just took my hat off so I could wear my hair in a high ponytail on top of my head, which worked better. Unfortunately, this was on the way back, and it was quite sunny and hot by then. Also, right at the end, I kind of had to pee, but it would have been really inconvenient to get into the woods on either side of the trail, and we were pretty close to the campsite, so I just decided to wait, but I didn’t want to drink any more water, or I wouldn’t have been able to wait … well, I should know this by now, but deciding not to drink water when you’re exercising hard is never a good idea, if you’re thirsty. Also, I’ve been drinking coffee pretty regularly, and hadn’t had any caffeine that day. In any event, by the time we were cooking dinner, I felt quite ill, and had a terrible, splitting headache. Also I was sore, and had twisted something in my left ankle. And my right knee. I managed to cook dinner (I’d brought some boil-in-the-bag Indian food, curried chickpeas and saag paneer, along with a Pringles-like can of poppadums), but I kept feeling worse and worse, so Donald kindly offered to clean up the dishes for me so I could just rest and get ready for bed. (And no, I wasn’t pretending to be sick to get out of cleaning duty!)

Thankfully, I felt much better in the morning. Though my ankle still hurt. But we both managed the (relatively) short hike back down to our car. We were moving more slowly though; it took us as long going down as it had going up on Friday, when we were fresh and energetic.

It was quite an enjoyable trip, despite all the pain and suffering! I thought the spectacular views made it all worthwhile. Though I’m not sure Donald is 100% convinced on this point. On the way down, we ran into a woman who was going camping with her two children. She told us that her husband had no interest in going. Later, I asked Donald if that was going to be me and our children in the future. He laughed, then said, “I’ll go sometimes.”

Another exciting thing about the trip is that I found lots of yummy edible mushrooms! Only one chanterelle, but lots of hedgehogs, and lots of winter chanterelles (I didn’t pick as many of these, though, because I wasn’t 100% sure of them at first; I put them in a separate bag and then confirmed their identity with my mushroom book once we were home). Donald thought the mushrooms were tasty, too; though he wouldn’t eat them until I had shown him pictures in the edible mushroom book that looked exactly like the mushrooms I had picked, and he had read the descriptions himself to be sure that there were no poisonous look-alikes. But he agreed that they were much better than ordinary white mushrooms from the grocery store.

So, that was our New Hampshire trip! Over the next few days, I’ll write about our trip to Texas and Lousiana (which we just got back from).

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Great Canadian science fiction

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Kristin

I just finished reading the latest issue of On Spec magazine (I often have a magazine going at the same time as whatever book I’m reading.). On Spec is probably Canada’s best-known speculative fiction magazine (edit: Actually, Chizine might be better known, being a SFWA-qualifying publication and all; unfortunately I tend to forget about Chizine because I’m not sure I’ll ever write a horror story under 4000 words – they also publish good stories, though!). It’s mostly a print magazine, but you can also buy a slightly cheaper electronic subscription, or single issue. The website is here. If you live in Canada, I think they have some newstand distribution; if you live in the US, you might be able to find copies at a convention.

I guess I should tell you why you’d want to buy copies or even a subscription to On Spec before telling you how! I’m always impressed by the quality and diversity of the stories they publish, and the Summer 2010 issue is no exception. (Did I say the same thing about Sybil’s Garage? Well, it’s true about On Spec, too. Just because I repeat myself doesn’t mean I’m not sincere.)

My favorite story was Greg Wilson’s “Still”. It wouldn’t do the story justice to say simply that it’s about a young wooden puppet who runs away from home after being molested by her music teacher. It is about that, yes, but it doesn’t try so hard to be an allegory of real abused children that it loses sight of the puppets whose story its telling; nor does it trivialize the suffering of real children. And it manages to find a happy ending, albeit a bittersweet one.

I also really liked Rob Engen’s “Thanks for the Game,” about interstellar aliens who land in Manitoba and learn to play hockey. It’s a much more interesting story than you might think, based on that one-sentence description, even if you’re not a Canadian or a hockey fan!

And, being a chemist, I couldn’t help but love Susan Forest’s “The Right Chemistry”, about the stormy relationship of the two bonded atoms in a molecule of oxygen. It’s full of chemistry puns that are so bad they’re good.

One thing I noticed, looking at the cover: some magazines put the names of the best-known authors appearing in that issue in big print, whereas lesser-known writers might not have their names appear on the cover at all. Not so with On Spec! Everyone’s name is the same size, and all the authors are listed in strict alphabetical order. I like that.

My own story, “The Observation Deck” (a flash fiction space opera–or, as someone from my writers group put it, a space aria) should be coming out in On Spec sometime next year. I’m looking forward to it; I’m sure I’ll be published alongside some really great authors.

American and international authors will be pleased to hear that, although the three authors I’ve mentioned are all either Canadian or live in Canada (as far as I can tell from their bios), and On Spec does make a point of publishing at least 80% Canadian content, there were some Americans in this issue, as well. And they just started accepting online submissions, so you no longer have to try to find IRCs, or have your friends in Canada mail you Canadian postage.

Get published in Canada, eh?

Posted in Short fiction | Tagged | 1 Comment

Dear Penthouse

Posted on August 22, 2010 by Kristin

I’m currently reading The Arabian Nights, a fairly recent translation (1990) by Husain Haddawy. Over the last few years, I’ve tried to start reading some of the classics of Western literature. Assisting me in this attempt is the embarrassingly useful reference guide, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (There are also 1001 movies to watch, 1001 albums to listen to, etc.) Laugh all you want, but I’m the sort of person who enjoys lists, and enjoys trying to do everything on a given list (Donald can attest to this, after I dragged him around to see every single sculpture at the De Cordova open-air museum.) And it’s not like I’ve stopped reading books that didn’t make it into the 1001 Books list.* It’s just that I’ve found this reference book a good place to get ideas for books I might want to read that didn’t get reviewed in Locus.

I have to say, of the really really old books in the 1001 Books list, I’m enjoying Arabian Nights far more than I enjoyed Aesop’s Fables, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Chariton’s Chaireas and Kallirhoe, Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, and Lucius Apuleius’ The Golden Ass. A lot of it probably has to do with the accessibility of the translations; I can’t speak to how closely Haddawy’s translation matches the original Arabic texts, but I find the writing fresh, lively and interesting in English. I think my enjoyment of Arabian Nights may also be partly because the stories are not as ancient as the others I’ve mentioned, and are thus culturally more accessible to a modern reader. (Familiarity of the stories may be part of it, as well, though some of the more famous Arabian Nights tales are not included in the translation I’m reading because their authenticity is apparently either dubious or absent – Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, for instance. And Aesop and Ovid both had a lot of familiar stories.)

So, I’m enjoying Arabian Nights. One thing I never realized before, though, is how erotic some of the stories are. I was telling Donald about The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies. There’s this porter, waiting in the marketplace to be hired, and a woman comes by and hires him to carry her groceries home from the market. When they get back to her house, the porter finds that, not only is she quite beautiful, but she lives with two other women who are even more lovely, and no men. He invites himself to stay for dinner, and they accept his invitation, and they all start drinking … well, you should read it yourself, but suffice it to say that there’s a lot of splashing naked in the fountain and “carousing”.

Anyway, Donald said, “That sounds like a Penthouse letter or something. ‘I never thought something like this would happen to a porter like me….'” Not that Donald has ever read Penthouse, of course; at least, that’s what he tells me.

Interestingly, the version of this story that appears in the children’s abridged version of Arabian Nights says only that the porter “sang a song … The three ladies were pleased with the song, and then sang themselves, so that the repast was a merry one, and lasted much longer than usual.” Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

There is, of course, far more to Arabian Nights than erotic stories of lovely women entertaining lonely porters. It’s a wonderful source of ideas to steal–er, be inspired by–if you’re a fantasy author. And there are really great insights into the culture of the 13th century Muslim world, and the every day life. For instance, in the story about the porter and the ladies, as they go through the market, you get to read about all the different shops they stop at, and what the lady buys at each one: at the fruit vendor’s, various fruits as well as baby cucumbers and flowers; mutton at the butcher, as well as charcoal (!); at the grocer’s, olives, cheese and pickles; at the dry grocer’s, dried fruits and nuts and sugar cane and roasted chick peas; cakes and cookies and sweet breads (not the pancreas kind!) at the confectioner’s; perfumes at the druggist, as well as loaves of sugar, candles and torches. (This being the Muslim world, the lady buys wine not at a wine shop, but by stopping at the apparently unmarked door of a house, “and when she knocked, an old Christian came down, received a dinar from her and handed her an olive green jug of wine.” Obviously not a southern Baptist Christian!) I mean, this kind of information about how people would do their shopping and what they might buy is just invaluable, if you’re writing fantasy set in a medieval sort of world.

Another fascinating insight comes where, in one of the stories, a lady relates how she used to be so wealthy that she owned 10 complete changes of clothing! I mean, I guess it would still be unusual today for a man to own 10 expensive suits, unless he were quite wealthy and needed to wear suits every day to his job. But reading stories from a time so long ago can really help you to step out of assumptions you might have about what people’s lives would be like in an imagined world that you’re writing about. If having 10 outfits is a sign that you’re very wealthy, you probably don’t want the baker’s daughter in your story owning 3 or 4 outfits. (I mean, obviously it depends on which historical time period and cultures you’re borrowing from, but it’s just good to think about these things.)

The next really old book on my list is Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel. An English translation, obviously. I once tried to read Victor Hugo in the original French, and gave up after a page and a half; if I can’t handle 19th century French, I’m unlikely to do better with the 16th century. We’ll see how that goes. It’s over a thousand pages long, so I’m a little worried. (I feel I should clarify that this is not the next book I’m planning to read, just the next really old book I’m planning to read.) But I hear that it has plenty of sex, too.

* No, no, there are plenty of other lists for me to choose from! I’m also trying to read all the Hugo-award winning novels. Then I guess I’ll read the Nebula-winning novels that didn’t also win Hugos, then maybe the World Fantasy winners … don’t know what I’ll do after that.

I do also read novels just because I picked them up and thought they looked cool, or because I’ve liked other books by that author, or because a friend recommended them. They don’t have to make it onto a list first. Just so you know.

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Everything you ever wanted to know about elves

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Kristin

I can’t decide if this is real; i.e., is this guy serious? I didn’t think so, but then I clicked on the link to go to his website, and apparently he’s a medium associated with this other medium who claims to be receiving messages from the spirit of Michael Jackson.

As something of an authority on elves myself, I was pleased to see Mr. Valentine confirm their vegetarian dietary practices; though as anyone who’s seen the elf documentary The Lord of the Rings can attest, they are not only 3 feet tall. (The late elf archaeologist, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien (Oxford) discusses these misconceptions at some length in his articles.)

The videoclip in the link is on the long side, but you only have to watch for a couple of minutes to get the joke. If it is a joke….

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Vampire dreams

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Kristin

So, I had a weird dream the other night.

I had run off with a vampire, with whom I was romantically involved (of course!). Though he wasn’t one of those suave vampires who spoke with a European accent and oozed sex appeal; he was handsome, but not remarkably so. The two of us were living in a trailer park with this other guy from my previous life, who was jealous of the vampire (I think). I also had a black short-haired cat named Leopold (instead of my actual cat, who is also black but long-haired, and female). Leopold was quite intelligent, and could understand everything I said to him, though he could only meow and purr in response. He was a little nervous of the vampire, and was going to run away, but I convinced him not to, and he was loyal enough to stay.

The jealous guy went and told the people in town that the vampire was really a vampire, and they all showed up at our trailer in force. The vampire wasn’t there, so my friend tried to get me to turn against him and admit to the townspeople that he was an evil, bloodsucking fiend. But I refused, so then they decided to come after me instead. Fortunately, the vampire had taught me some magic tricks to help me escape from people with bad intentions. They helped a little, but didn’t work all that well, so I still had to run. It’s unclear whether I escaped; at that point, the dream morphed into something about a deer being chased into an old warehouse by a lion, and then the warehouse started to collapse, and then caught on fire.

Donald said he almost wanted to suggest that I try turning the dream into a story, since it was already so much more coherent than any of his dreams. “But,” he said, “I’m not sure the world really needs any more vampire romance fiction.”

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Top 10 Rejection letters

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Kristin

These aren’t all writing-related, but some of them are pretty funny.

Lots of ads though, huh? I hope I never have to resort to advertising in order to keep my website running.

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Pickles on a pedestal

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Kristin

I made my dad (who’s visiting from Nova Scotia) come over and look at this clip, promising that it would be funny, and he said, “This isn’t going to be one of those cheeseburger cat pictures is it?”

No, even better! An Austrian sculptor has an entire exhibition of pickle sculptures at a museum in Salzburg. It must be seen to be believed.

Unfortunately, the videoclip in this link starts off with a commercial. But it’s worth waiting for!

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Sybil’s Garage no. 7

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Kristin

I just finished reading the latest issue of the magazine Sybil’s Garage. I can’t claim to be unbiased in my recommendation, since the editor, Matt Kressel, is a friend of mine. But I’ve been reading Sybil’s Garage almost from the beginning (I think I did miss #1), and I’ve always found great stories there. I think #7 is the best issue yet.

I particularly liked Amy Sisson’s “Suicide Club” and Tom Crosshill’s “Thinking Woman’s Crop of Fools”, two short and somewhat chilling glimpses of the future; among the poetry, I was struck by Jaqueline West’s “One October Night in Baltimore.” One thing that I’m really impressed by, looking at the whole issue, is the diversity of content: stories and poems; flash fiction and longer short stories (though they don’t really publish anything over 5000 words); traditional narratives and more experimental approaches to storytelling; science fiction and fantasy; settings past, present and future; North American and international. I like not knowing what to expect next when I turn the page.

I don’t know what to expect from Sybil’s Garage no. 8, but I’m sure it will be worth waiting for!

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Fixing the recipe as you go

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Kristin

If you do a lot of cooking, you start to notice that some cookbooks are better than others. Not just because the food you make from the recipes tastes better. Some cookbooks are also better than others at giving instructions that you can (and should) follow as written for the results. Other cookbooks … not so good.

My target once again is one of Rachael Ray’s recipes, from her Just in Time! cookbook. (It occurs to me that I have been, probably incorrectly, referring to this title in earlier posts without the cutesy exclamation point. My bad!) Rachael Ray’s recipes are actually better than average, with respect to being able to follow the recipe written in the book. Not nearly as good as America’s Test Kitchen … but then, who is? They’re hardcore. They test every possible permutation of the recipe, and then have all the variations submitted to tasters in a blind tasting. Not everyone can be America’s Test Kitchen.

The Rachael Ray meal in question is referred to as “Dinner at the Ivy.” This vague and unhelpful name refers to some restaurant in LA that she likes to eat at, and the “Dinner” in the cookbook is her interpretation of their Tomato Salad Stuffed Artichokes and Mushroom Tagliatelle.

First off, the cookbook said it would take 60 minutes to prepare, and it took me 2 hours. But that’s fine; by now, I double the time estimate given in any Rachael Ray cookbook. The mushroom pasta was a bit too much food for 4 servings, but not as far off as many of her recipes, so that’s fine. The issues were with the preparation.

I didn’t really like the artichoke cooking instructions she gave: put them in boiling water and put a clean dish towel on top to keep them submerged. Rachael Ray likes to dirty a lot of dish towels in her recipes (she also recommends using them to wring the water out of thawed frozen spinach, which you can do perfectly well with bare hands); but as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I’m not looking to have to wash any more dish towels than I absolutely have to. Also, if you submerge artichokes in water to cook them, they’re going to get pretty water-logged. I followed the ATK method, steaming the artichokes by setting them on thick onion slices so they’re just above the surface of the boiling water. Only I didn’t have any big onions (or a steamer rack, the other recommended option), so I used my dessert custard cups instead (empty, of course). This works pretty well, only you have to make sure to have the open part facing up instead of down, or they’ll jump around once the water starts boiling, and the artichokes will fall off into the water (I learned this the last time I made artichokes and didn’t have big onions lying around).

The tomato salad used to fill the artichokes involved cherry tomatoes. The recipe didn’t say anything about cutting the cherry tomatoes in half, but I thought that was ridiculous. Of course you have to cut the cherry tomatoes in half, if you’re putting them in a salad. Otherwise the flavors won’t meld properly. Also, you won’t be fitting many tomatoes into the hollowed-out artichoke if you don’t cut them in half first. Spheres aren’t going to pack together as tightly as half-spheres.

The mushroom tagliatelle recipe went more or less according to recipe. Except that when you cook the mushrooms, it says to use “medium to medium-high” heat. Well, even if you don’t have the entire skillet filled with mushrooms (and I did), they’re not going to brown on medium heat. At least not in 7-8 minutes. They’ll slowly release liquid, and you’ll have palid, unbrowned mushrooms swimming in mushroom broth for quite some time. Which is fine if that’s what you want, but it probably isn’t. With few exceptions, anything that can be browned before making a sauce or a soup should be (onions and garlic are usually exceptions, depending on the recipe). Browning food causes a chemical reaction to occur between the fat or oil in the pan, and the sugars in the food, and the product of that reaction provide depth and richness of flavor.

In any case, if you have a full pan of mushrooms and want to brown them, you pretty much have to turn the heat up all the way, or almost all the way (depends on your stove, of course). It still takes longer than the 7-8 minutes Rachael Ray thinks it takes at medium heat (unless she has some super hot stove); more like 15 minutes. And of course you have to keep an eye on them. Burning food causes a different chemical reaction to occur: the organic molecules in the food being oxidized to elemental carbon. This, of course, contributes a flavor not usually thought of as deep and rich.

Only three changes to the recipe isn’t so bad, I guess. And it’s not as if the meal wouldn’t have tasted good, had I followed the recipe to the letter. But I don’t think it would have been as good, and it would have been far more frustrating to prepare; even more frustrating than being very hungry after an hour and a half in the kitchen, and still not ready to eat.

I did make a fourth change, but I’m not 100% sure I should have. The recipe said to transfer the cooked pasta to the sauce with tongs. It was unclear whether you were supposed to drain it first. I assumed not. That seemed unwise, because it was fresh pasta, and that overcooks really easily if you leave it in the water just a hair too long. Also, it seemed that lifting it right out of the water and into the sauce would carry a lot of water along with the pasta (both into the sauce and onto the stove between the pot of pasta and the pan of sauce. And, I’m sorry, but what humongous skillet is Rachael Ray talking about here, that can accomodate sauce and 18 oz. of cooked pasta! I drained the pasta, then put it back in the empty pot and added the sauce to that. But, you know, it’s really hard to mix the mushrooms in that way, which makes me wonder if I really should have added the pasta to the sauce, not the other way around. Hmm. Maybe if I left the pasta in the colander, then transferred the sauce to the big pasta cooking pot, then added the pasta to the sauce…. Next time.

The recipe called for 1 cup of dry white wine, and I followed my friend Bob’s advice: never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink. In fact, if you use a particular wine in a recipe, a glass of that wine will often taste particularly nice with the finished meal. I used a Toscana from Antinori (an Italian wine). And it was very nice! (It’s not a super-expensive wine, either; I found it for $13 at a local liquor store.) So was the food itself.

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The slippery slope

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Kristin

Now that Donald has moved in upstairs and lets me drive his car whenever I want to, I feel like I’m becoming one of those dreaded suburbanites who drives everywhere! I’m already doing all my grocery shopping by car, so I can go to the locally-owned greengrocer with lots of local produce, instead of going to the yuppie lifestyle conglomerate, Whole Foods (which I could get to easily without the use of fossil fuels … but I digress). Today I had to buy flat silver sandals for a wedding in early September, and instead of taking public transportation downtown, I drove Donald’s car to the Burlington Mall. A big mall in the suburbs, where no one takes public transportation. A big mall with free parking.

My excuse was that it would have taken me at least an hour to take public transportation downtown. Each way. It’s less than 30 minutes to drive to the mall. I simply didn’t have the extra time to spare. I needed the sandals. I was on a deadline.

But that’s always how it starts, isn’t it?

Fortunately, I did find silver sandals. I also found a nice pair of brown sandals that I liked, that seemed quite comfortable. And an umbrella, because my last one broke well over a year ago, and I still hadn’t replaced it yet.

And, finally, the piece de resistance:

They sat on a shelf at Sears, right in the middle of the main aisle down the center of the store, and virtually demanded that I buy them. As it happens, I didn’t have any rain boots either, and had been thinking that I should get some. Aren’t they special?

In Japan, pretty much every major tourist destination sells themed Hello Kitty souvenirs in the gift shop: key chains or cell phone charms or the like that show Hello Kitty dressed in the local costume, or in a local setting. They’re very cute. You could probably travel much of Japan on a Hello Kitty pilgrimage, picking up special local Hello Kittys everywhere you went.

You could probably do it by public transportation, too.

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