I found my dream vacation!

 

Julia Child's French kitchen
Photo by Airbnb

I hope you noticed I’ve been absent, silent, gone for a couple of days. I plead an avalanche that hit my desk plus lots of company. By evening, which is the time I usually write my blog posts, I was too tired. No functioning brain. But now I’m ready to chuck it all and take a vacation I never dreamed was possible. Me, who doesn’t really like to fly and never felt as drawn to France as I do to Scotland.

What changed it? A chance to rent Julia Child’s cottage, La Pitchoune, (the little one) in the south of France. Julia’s kitchen with its famous pegboard is intact and functioning—you can cook dinner if you want. The three-bedroom, three-bath cottage also comes with an outdoor kitchen, a charming patio, a saltwater pool, and lush gardens.

Of course, this Airbnb is a bit expensive: $703 a night is within reason (after all, it sleep six), but if you want an all-day cooking class—shopping, wine pairing, and instructions for preparing one of her legendary, multi-course dinners—add $1500 to the bill. If you’d rather watch than cook, you can hire a personal chef for $500 (not including ingredients and wine). And then there’s airfare to France.

Would you all please buy a lot of books so I can go. Maybe I’d take my daughters. For the nonce, I have something wonderful to dream about.

Meantime back in Fort Worth where my feet are firmly planted on the ground, it has been a busy but happy few days. A load of work landed on my desk, starting with the neighborhood newsletter. I always encourage people to submit before the deadline, and this month they did, with the result that a lot of copy landed on my computer late Sunday night, which was technically before Monday’s deadline. Today I sent a whopping 28-page issue to the printer. Sunday also brought a critique of Irene in Danger from my mentor/friend that sent me off on some rewriting, and now I’m giving it one last proof before putting it into production. Hope to publish early in November. I may be fooling myself, but reading it again this time, I like it better than I ever thought I would.

Being busy makes me happy, but so does visiting with friends, new and old, and I have had some treats along that line. Saturday night Linda, a friend I’ve known for at least thirty-five years, came for supper. For most of those years, we have lived at least thirty miles apart, and when we did live in the same city briefly, early on when we were, ahem, much younger, we weren’t really that close. It’s been a friendship that has strengthened and grown over the years. Now, she’s about to move to Taos, though she assures me she will keep a presence in Texas. I hope so.

Linda has long been a person who appreciates both my mysteries—she says I have a devious mind—and my cooking experiments. I fixed a 1905 Columbia Salad for us. It’s the signature salad, tossed at tableside, of the Columbia restaurant in Tampa that opened in 1905. The dressing is hearty, to say the least—next time I may cut back on the oregano a bit. But the salad is rich with ham, Swiss cheese, head lettuce, Parmesan, and grated Romano—I used pecorino, as I always do. And I left out the pimiento-stuffed Kalamata olives—catering to my own taste (or dislikes). For dessert, I broiled nectarine halves with brown sugar (too much), blueberries, and a pat of butter. As she fought to separate the fruit from its stone, Linda muttered, “My grandmother would say these are not cling free.” We didn’t have halves—we had sort of hash. Linda said she loved it; I thought it too sweet. Another time I’d cut way back on the sugar.

Last night I went from old to new—a relatively new friend came for happy hour and stayed for supper, because I enticed her with a composed salad of canned salmon, pickled cucumbers, hearts of palm, hard-boiled egg, and tomato (darn! I forgot the avocado languishing in the fridge). It’s a salad that my mom and I used to make, and it carried me back to my childhood. My guest enjoyed it. She and I can go in a nanosecond from “So how’s your world” to some really involved discussions, which we both enjoy and which involve lots of laughter. A thoroughly pleasant evening.

Tonight was happy hour with the neighbors, which is always fun, and then Christian grilled us lamb burgers that we had with tzatziki sauce I had in the fridge and a salad dressed with a mixture of the dressings in the fridge, including the 1905 salad one. The meal was heavy with oregano but so good.

And now, dear friends, I’m back to proof reading. But I expect my dreams tonight to be of cooking a gibelotte in Julia’s kitchen.

 

 

 

Ah, Texas spring weather

March is not going out like a lamb. Today started out drizzly and gray but ended on a note of bright, late-evening sunshine. In between, we had massive storm warnings and some pretty severe weather, mostly I think to the south of me. I just got a good steady rain, the kind spring gardens need. Jordan arrived to work on the garage sale items but one look at the TV weather coverage convinced her she wanted to get home and put her car in the garage.
Jacob came to me and asked with real concern, “Is your car in the garage?” I assured him it was, and he said, “Okay. But stay in.” Then he let me kiss him (yeah, you read that right) and they were gone.

I did a bit of book sorting today—four piles turned into seven—books I want, antique children’s books, cookbooks I want, books I don’t want, books that are water damaged beyond hope (only three), and books for the garage sale—I have it in my head browsers will want cookbooks and non-historical children’s books. I may be all wet—like many of my books. I did photocopy one recipe for ranchero sauce that I wanted from a pretty worn cookbook, but I’m keeping my battered copy (my mom’s really) of the Good Housekeeping cookbook. So good for basics. Also my first edition Joy of Cooking.

Good news: we’re making progress on storm recovery. An AT&T man was here for a good two hours this morning and—yay!—the huge new TV in the sunroom works. I think that drying equipment Blackmon Mooring used was really powerful. I washed the last of the mop-up rugs. The floor people will start either Friday or Monday. The adjustor was worried about remaining dampness in the insulation but Lewis is sure the drying equipment got it all—and the restoration company’s sophisticated equipment showed that it did. Tomorrow the exterminator comes because the adjustor saw that huge rat in the attic.

And I think the contractor is ready to go to the city for a permit for the cottage. All these big money transactions make me very nervous.

I did a good bit of proof-reading today on the pre-print The Gilded Cage and have so far found nothing of concern. Need to keep getting review copies out.

Cancelled my usual Wednesday night dinner because both Betty and I were tired and we feared being caught in a storm. I’m getting a bit tired of tuna and cottage cheese! Maybe egg salad is next.

The Creeping Disease of Inertia

Inertia crept up on me this weekend. After a week that seemed busy and crowded with people, I so looked forward to two days at home alone, getting work done. Saturday I finished reading emails and Facebook, read the newspaper such as it is, and then wondered what to do—all my work projects seemed on hold depending on someone else’s time schedule. So I read a mystery most of the day, napped, and made myself from-scratch noodles (not mac) and cheese—really good if I do say so. But by Saturday night, I felt inertia had crept up and taken charge, and I planned to stay home Sunday too.

The old me would have gone to church this morning and with my kids to the Boar’s Head Festival at our church tonight. The new me didn’t have the spunk to do either. Once again, I read emails, Facebook, and the newspaper—which is a little meatier on Sundays. And then there I was. What would I do? I pulled myself out of my funk and began to proof one of my older mysteries that my former publisher had taken down. By two o’clock, I had finished Murder at the Tremont House and will post it next week.

Then the files for the print copy of Desperate for Death came by email from the formatter, and I—finally!—got it submitted and am now trying to submit files to Kindle. It keeps telling me important information is missing and please check the items marked in red. Only I can’t find them. I think it may be pricing information but so far I see no place to include that. I’ll keep trying like an obsessed woman. But every time I start over again, I have to re-key all the book information—very frustrating.

Having literally wasted 2015 moaning about my hip and leg pain, 2016 is the year I’m going to get serious again about my writing, so today was a good start. But just a start. I still have six mysteries to go, if I can find my way through the Kindle system. Still, it cheered me greatly to have done what I did today. I vanquished inertia, and now I look forward to a busy week filled with appointments that will get me out of the house and away from inertia.