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Category: Deliciousness

Hungry Mirror

Published by Tim Pratt on November 2, 2012

My first day of quasi-NaNoing went well. I successfully avoided writing for most of the morning by doing grocery shopping, messing around online, and debating endlessly about what two of the main characters should be named (I still haven’t entirely settled on names, but I made up placeholders).

Eventually, around mid-day, I vowed to myself that I would not drink the coveted daytime beer until I at least attempted to write something. So I sat down and started tapping away, and managed to get the first chapter done (and just a bit of chapter 2), writing 1880 words altogether.

I then promptly departed for the sunny courtyard of my favorite beerhouse, Jupiter, where I drank first a Moonlight Bony Fingers and then a Lagunitas Brown Shugga, imparting a rather lovely buzz to the remainder of my afternoon.

Ideally, the way this fast-novel-writing thing works is, I write 6 or 8 pages a day, and then think a lot about what I’m going to write the next day, so that when the time comes, I don’t spend a lot of time staring blankly at the page with no idea how to proceed.

As day 2 dawns, we’ll see how well that works out.

Word count (for what it’s worth): 1881

Notable line(s): Charlie was eaten by the mirror about forty minutes later.

How do you like those apples?

Published by Tim Pratt on November 3, 2011

NaNo Update: Wrote 2,500 words or so yesterday — a bit on my lunch break, the rest in the evening. A creepy pathologist has given his creepy opinion on a creepy medical mystery, and the subject of necromancy has been broached. Today I get to write someone running for her life and kicking robots. (Kicking robots is a futile thing; it hurts your foot, and doesn’t much bother the robot.)

Last night I started reading King’s 11/22/63, and it’s totally engaging so far. I’m not particularly interested in the Kennedy assassination, but that doesn’t matter; it’s weird time travel! And more importantly, it’s Stephen King. I’m pretty much a wholly non-critical reader when it comes to King, maybe because I started reading him so young. I just fall into his books completely and bob happily along. Even his books that didn’t make a huge impression on me, that I wouldn’t bother to re-read (Dolores Claiborne, Gerald’s Game) are entirely engrossing on my first time through. I could easily do nothing else today but read that book… except my to-do list involves going grocery shopping, going to the library, cleaning house, playing with my kid, writing more, etc. etc. etc.

I have deemed things autumnal enough to make my famous apple onion parsnip carrot soup. Here is the “recipe” (keeping in mind that, with soups, I just kinda put stuff in until it tastes good):

Brown a pound or so of sliced sweet italian sausage in olive oil. Add chopped peeled carrots, peeled apples, onion, and parsnips, and saute until the onions are translucent. Add maybe half a dark beer and a generous splash of apple cider vinegar. Bring to a boil and let some of the liquid evaporate. Add chicken or veggie broth until it’s as soupy as you like. Simmer a while. Season with rosemary. Serve with crusty bread or even sandwiches of sharp cheddar cheese. (How many of each veggie and what kind of apple to use is a matter of personal taste — I’d do maybe two carrots, a couple parsnips, a couple of Granny Smith apples, one good-sized onion.)

Foods!

Published by Tim Pratt on September 26, 2011

We went to a lovely birthday party on Saturday, for one of River’s school friends. We like the parents a lot (they came to River’s birthday last year), they have a beautiful house, they did a treasure hunt for the kids, and they fed us deep dish pizza and good ice cream. Normally children’s birthday parties are fun for the kids and not that scintillating for adults, but this one was a really good time.

And Sunday, we went to the Eat Real festival! It was raining intermittently, and cool, which made me happy, because that meant: it would be less crowded. But it wasn’t raining much, and it was gentle rain when it did, so it was mostly quite nice to wander around and eat the world. We tried many things: pulled pork, cupcakes, meatloaf-bacon sandwich, falafel sandwich, fish taco, and my eternal always favorite, Fat Face Popsicles, where I got my yearly fix of a Thai Iced Tea and Sweet Potato popsicle. (And shared an awesome Lime and Avocado popsicle with my wife and kid.) Not to be all internet-cliche, but: nom. (We weren’t that gluttonous — we shared things, portions are small, etc. The point is to sample many things, and oh, we did.)

Our friend Gail (sister of our friend Karen!) had her Liba Falafel food truck there, and we chatted a bit with her — and she gave River a little tour of the truck’s kitchen! He loves helping us cook at home (and is basically a tiny aspiring chef who’s always making pretend pies and cookies from bubbles, play doh, and mud), so he was excited, and thought it was really cool.

Plus, he got to dance around to live music, and that’s always good.

Then I came home and worked on Grim Tides a bit (I haven’t quite hit 30,000 words yet, but I should by tomorrow night), and wrote a scene where Marla has lunch at the amazing Mama’s Fish House in Maui. Gah now I want to go back there so badly. At least I can feed imaginary characters their lobster guacamole and stuffed mahi mahi.