And.... I'm Back

I've been absent from the blogosphere for almost two months now. Sorry to disappoint you, Mom! But I had gotten my groove back, writing wise, and I didn't want any distractions.

Now that I'm settled into the groove, I'm back to blogging. More tomorrow, but for now I'll just mark my return with:

Three Things I Learned While I Was Away From Blogging

1. The Atlanta Bread Company has so-so bread but killer wifi.
   
2. Skirt steak prepared very well and cut against the grain is still skirt steak.
3. The "drainage pipe" can also be called the "sewage pipe." Note to husbands: If your wife is currently mopping up overflow from said pipe, use the word "drainage."

The First Annual Kitchen Fest

Last week I was home in Texas (ah, Texas!) to visit the fam. My sister, Kate, just got back from a 2-year teaching gig in China, and as it happens, both she and I are really into cooking at the moment. Long before I arrived on site, we had agreed that we might spend basically my entire visit cooking. And it turns out that's what we did.

We sauteed. We pureed. We seeded. We boiled and roasted and baked. We also goofed around. There was some Whitney Houston, and some Journey. Also a cucumber-microphone.


Somewhere around day 2, deep into the pasta-rolling phase, I asked her what I should call this event for my blog.

"I could call it, um, Kitchen Fest '09?" I said.

Kate gasped. "We should have a Kitchen Fest every year!"

I gasped. "That is the best idea ever!"

We fell deep into discussions of exactly what Kitchen Fest entailed and how to commemorate it.

"We could have t-shirts that said Kitchen Fest," Kate said.

"No, aprons!"

"With badges!"

Kate was in favor of having our aprons read "Co-founder" in the event that Kitchen Fest eventually expands to include other participants. But I personally feel that this is against the spirit of Kitchen Fest. While we were negotiating this, Mark happened into the kitchen.

"Are you playing Kitchen Fest?" he asked.

"Playing?!" I said. "We're not playing!" said Kate.

And thus Kitchen Fest was born.

We have every intention of repeating it next summer. Currently on the slate for 2010 is canning, though that's certainly not set in stone. Here's what we made this year:

Butternut Squash Soup

This recipe was already a big success for me on the home front, and in this wider showing it did not disappoint. Friends and family alike declared it delicious. If you use this recipe, I think it's best to remove a few big spoonfuls of stock before pureeing, so you wind up with a nice, thick texture. Also the cream is, for me, not essential.

Ravioli

We added a bit of wheat flour to the dough, with ok results, I think. We used three fillings: Alton Brown's meatloaf filling, a spinach ricotta filling, and a butternut squash and carmelized onion filling that was my personal favorite.

By the time we were done (and we did this a lot) we thought we had developed a good hand at making the dough reach the right consistency. I feel like I haven't perfected ravioli yet, though... sounds like there's more rolling in my future.

Red Sauce

Sorry, I don't have a picture of this one. But let me just tell you that it was phenomenal. It totally overwhelmed the ravioli, but that was ok, because it was just... so... fantastic! It was perhaps a little too spicy; we didn't have chili flake, so we used red pepper instead and cut back on the amount... but perhaps not enough. Red pepper is wonderfully healthy, though, so in the future I may try to just tone it down instead of going over to chili flake.

Chicken Stock

Yes, there's a chicken somewhere in that pot. I feel almost certain of it. This was Kate's recipe, so I don't have a link, but basically it goes like this: Wash a chicken. Chop some veggies. Boil them for a long, long, long, long time.

We let it go five hours, and the flavor was pretty darn wonderful. Afterwards, Kate cut the flesh off the chicken to use for soup, and it too was just delish.

Raspberry Breakfast Bars

Don't let the title fool you; these are dessert bars, plain and simple. They're like brownies, but with fruit. Yum! Look in the lower right, and you'll see the corner we sacrificed to immediate tasting. I'm looking forward to trying these with strawberries, or maybe blackberries. Although, to be clear, there was nothing wrong with the raspberry filling. It was positively delectable.

And there you have Kitchen Fest '09. I'm willing to declare it a great success, because I had fun with my family and also learned a few things. As for Kitchen Fest 2010, well... does anyone know where I can get some custom aprons?

Good Business and Adequate Salsa

The other day at Borders I was browsing the tables up front and came across this interesting find: America's Most Wanted Recipes.

It's a collection of recipes from popular restaurants, like Chili's, the Olive Garden, and KFC. What a great idea, I thought.

Because it is. An interesting book, one that should appeal to a lot of people--even people outside the normal cookbook market. A good seller.

I flipped through the table of contents and found exactly one recipe I really, really wanted: Chili's salsa. And then I did a thing that I perhaps should not have done:

I copied it down.

Ok, yes, I know this was wrong. But it was literally the only recipe I wanted. And after I went home, I made a discovery. The recipe was very, very marginally different from this recipe, found all over the web:

Chili's Salsa Copycat Recipe

1 14.5 oz. can tomatoes with green chiles
1 14.5 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes
4 tsp diced jalepeno
1/4 cup diced onion
3/4 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp sugar

1. Pulse fresh vegetables in food processor.
2. Add everything else and process.

This information cast a new light on America's Most Wanted Recipes. Was it possible that the author didn't actually develop the recipes for the book? That instead he just copied info from the web, tweaked it, collated it into a nice format, and sent it off to be published? I don't actually know how true this is, of course--I only read one recipe--but it seemed possible.

When I encounter something like this, I feel slightly... irked, even ripped off--as though the author were cheating at life. Hey, what gives, I want to say. Why do you get to be in the front of the bookstore?

But then I have to slow down, climb off my high horse, and remember that:

• Bringing a product to a new market is a valuable service.

By putting together that book, the author brought those recipes to a new demographic, the demographic of people who doesn't search the web for copycat recipes, but might be interested anyway. That's valuable. And if he can earn some money from that, well, he deserves it. But it doesn't really even matter if he deserves it because...

• The success of others does not impoverish me.

There's no reason in the world for me to feel jealous or annoyed when somebody else thinks of a good way to make money--or publication, or critical acclaim, or any of the other things I sometimes get jealous of. Even if it seems to me that what they're doing doesn't have value, or that their effort was not commensurate with the reward--well, who cares? Why should I begrudge them their success? The bottom line is: I shouldn't. An the end of the day, they're them and I'm me. I can find my own way to success and be happy for them too.

***

Once I got my head on straight, I took a look at my purloined salsa recipe. It was darn easy; apart from chopping a few meager veggies (which I like), and cleaning my food processor, there was basically nothing to do. I whipped it up and tried it. It was good.

But it wasn't just right.

I let the flavors meld overnight, but it still didn't taste like Chili's to me. So I packed some up in a ramekin and decided to taste test it against the real thing.

For those of you who knew me pre-2002, you're probably thinking, "Hey! What's going on here? Jane hates salsa!" The truth is, Mark's been training me up: first on chili, then salsa, and now we're up to crazy things like chicken wings. So I was excited to see how close I had come to the real thing.

Just from the picture you can see a few differences. Mine is chunkier. Also, they didn't seed their jalepenos, and I did. (like I said, I have a history as a spice wimp. I panicked.) Also, their chunks of pepper are a softer, more mossy green, meaning that they were cooked rather than fresh.

But the real differences were in the taste. Chili's salsa tastes miles more fresh and spicy. After a bite of mine, I can distinctly taste garlic and cumin, whereas the Chili's seasoning was more of a piece with the whole dish. Theirs was also much brighter; I wondered if it might contain some lemon juice. Mark thought it might have hot sauce.

So, the upshot is that we have a laundry list of things to try with the next batch. Roast the peppers. Leave the seeds. Try hot sauce and lemon juice. And Mark's interested in trying some other peppers, not just jalepenos.

I believe I can conquer that salsa. Just give me time...

The Truth About Working at Home... With Your Husband

A while back I wrote about the ugly Truth About Working at Home. Since Mark's joined me at home while he works on a programming project of his own, I thought it was time for an update about life in a home office for two.

1. You will spend more time making food.

I'm perfectly willing to make a lunch out of string cheese for myself. But if Mark's around, well, it's at least gonna be string cheese and a veggie.

2. You will feed off each other's moods.

You know how hard it is to maintain a cherry attitude when your office mate is grim and grumpy and monosyllabic? Well, now imagine he's your office mate AND your husband.

3. You will uncover previously unknown flaws in your beloved.

I just have to ask: how can a man fill up his office trash can every day? Every blessed day? I know for a fact that his work is mostly on the computer. So how does this happen?

For Mark's part, I'm sure he is just now realizing how many stashes of unmated socks I have in various corners of the closets. And how bad I am at disciplining the cats.

4. You will lose all sense of time.

When Mark was working, it was fairly easy for me to stay anchored in the real world. I nearly always knew what day of the week it was. Now I work on Sunday, relax on Tuesday, and stay up 'til 4 a.m. on a regular basis. When neither of us have any time-specific commitments, it's just all too easy to lose track of the clock.

5. At some point, the honeymoon will be over.

You will realize that this is not in fact some wonderful working vacation -- a rare chance to spend more time with your man. Instead, this is your new life. It's no longer romantic, and thrilling, and blissful. It's just real, and present, and, from a financial perspective, a little bit scary.

When this realization hits you, it's not a bad thing. It's a chance to come down to earth and appreciate your situation with new, more grown up eyes. After all, when the honeymoon's over, that's when the real marriage begins.

Me, Myself, and Kitty

As I'm editing my book, there are a lot of tasks on my plate: smoothing plot, seeding suspicions. But one of the most important things I'm doing is crystallizing the character of my protagonist, Kitty.

It's a lot of work. When I started out I had a vague idea of who she was: sort of a template to get me started, to give me a name to put on the page. But as I worked my way through each of the scenes, I gained a much stronger knowledge of who she was and what she wanted. Now it's my job to make sure that all that I've learned is there from the start: that on page one, Kitty is the whole person I know her to be, complete with flaws, quirks, and everything.

The truth of it is, she's a lot like me.

Not in any of the actual details, the things I'd list if I was describing her. I'm not a mystery-solving farm girl in the big city. I'm no master manipulator. And I'm not (at least I hope I'm not) wildly self-involved.

No, Kitty isn't what I am at all. But underneath all those details, Kitty is very much who I am. Her turn of phrase, the way she looks at the world, the things she observes about other people: these are all me. Starkly, obviously me, to anyone who knows me well enough to see.

I used to think that this was lazy, that as a writer I was supposed to be able to craft characters from the ground up, to give them unique voices that had nothing to do with mine. Now I think that was just naive. The fact is, lending Kitty my voice, my outlook -- my me-ness -- layers a lot of reality upon the fictional skeleton of her character. It makes her feel solid to me, tangible, true.

It's strange but true: Kitty isn't me. But she is.

World Building 101

Fantasy writers know what world building is. It's where you flesh out all the details of your story's strange milieu. How does magic work? What do they eat for breakfast in Upper Malefickia? And what is the name of those pirhanna-like fish you put in the river your heroes have to cross?

But my book is set in the 1920's. The real 1920's. No need for world building, right?

Wrong.

One of the most important parts of sci fi and fantasy world building is deciding on "the rules of the world." If you decide that wizards and witches generate their power by chowing down on the legs of spiders dipped in tabasco sauce... well, weird, but ok. It's a rule. You establish it early, and you're expected to stick to it for the remainder of the story.

In more reality-based genres, a lot of the technical rules have already been established (the sun rises in the east and sets in the west). But I still have to answer some metaphysical questions about the way my world operates. Such as:

• Do bad things happen to good people?

And if so, how bad? Is my world one in which an innocent woman could be kidnapped? In which she could be raped and killed? In which a child could be raped and killed? Or is it a world in which, in general, if something awful happens to you, you deserved it?

• Does true love conquer all?

Most romances would answer this question in the affirmative; so many that I'd say it's an underlying rule of the genre. For other genres, it's not always such a clear answer.

• Does everyone get their just desserts?

Is justice a sort of force in my world, one which just can't be denied (no matter how much it seems like it can deep in the middle of Act II)? Or is justice only for a certain part of society, those that can afford it? What about injustice? Are there forms of it that are rampant, expected, part of the cost of living in this world?

• What are the roles of various groups?

Are the cops generally the good guys or the bad guys? Are politicians crooked or honest? Are women independant or helpless? Are children innocent or cruel?

• What is the role of accident and coincidence?

Is it acceptable to have the plot turn on an accident? Or is everything the result of carefully orchestrated events?

• What kind of humor exists in my world?

Is it at all possible that my protagonist will slip on a banana peel? Can her character be wildly over the top? Or is my world a grittier, realer place where humor consists mostly of bitingly clever dialogue?

No matter how factual the setting, I have a lot of leeway to play with all of these things. And I have an obligation to keep all of them consistent. Otherwise, I'll get the same reaction as the fantasy writer who suddenly has her wizard draw power from eating butterfly legs dipped in ketchup:

WTF?

No One Cares Whodunit

I recently finished reading Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder. (Loved it!)

Although it was chock full of useful info, the one piece of wisdom that really resonated with me was a single word: Whydunit.

That's the term the author uses for the mystery genre. When I read it, it was like one of those lightning bulb moments. Because, of course, duh! No one cares whodunit.

The most disappointing mysteries are the ones in which everyone has an obvious motive, and at the end of the book... well, it turns out one of them did it. For exactly the reason you thought they might. Boooo-rrrring!

Much more interesting are the ones in which the motive is obfuscated in some way, and comes clear just before the end. There are a ton of ways to do this... including the one I've chosen for my book, which I hope people will find interesting and surprising.

I wonder: are there other questions that can provide a really satisfying end to a mystery? Maybe "Howdunit," for a locked room mystery. Or "Howcatch'em," for a Columbo-style story, in which you know the guilty party from the start.

But I think it's the Why that really gets to the heart of mysteries... maybe to the heart of stories in general.