Jacob at three
but the cookbook has some
of my favorite reciipes
Ever
have those nights when you feel at eight o’clock that it surely must be
midnight already? That’s how I feel. Although I am constantly trying to rid
myself of obsessive schedules, I’m pretty much tied to my own routine. I don’t
want to go to bed at eight or nine, because I don’t want to wake, sleepless, in
the middle of the night. I try to sleep from eleven to eight, the Lord and
Sophie willing. But tonight I’m sleepy, worn out by some conflicts swirling
around me. I tell myself—and others—I don’t want to be involved in intrigue,
but sometimes I can’t remain aloof. And so it is tonight.
To
soothe my soul, I began to do some menu planning, always an activity I enjoy.
For instance, I found a recipe tonight for rosemary pot roast. Between now and
the holidays, the calendars around here are full, and I foresee meals on the
at-home evenings of leftovers or heavy hors d’oevres. But it’s never too early
to stash things away in my “never tried” file, which is bulging. Periodically,
I go through it and firmly say to myself, “It sounds great, but you’ll never
fix it” or “You like this, but your family wouldn’t.” And, plop, it goes in the
trash. I waste a lot of printer ink and paper that way, but I haven’t gotten
sophisticated enough to keep my recipe collection online. And if I did, I’d
just have to print each recipe out as I cooked it. As it is, I do that with
recipes from the manuscripts of my cookbooks. But I foresee rosemary pot roast
on the January menu—see how I’m jumping ahead?
Tonight,
looking through appetizer recipes for our neighborhood ladies very small happy hour
next week (Jordan wants to make my salmon dip), I came across my mom’s pickled
shrimp. She always said it would keep a week in the fridge. In early adulthood
I developed an allergy to shrimp—made me break out, so I was afraid to try it
for fear the next time would be anaphylactic shock. Allergies come and go, and
I might well be able to eat shrimp now, but the fear lingers. Still, for
nostalgia’s sake, I’d like to fix that. We do still as a family treasure Mom’s
cheeseball recipe. This year, sixteen-year-old Morgan said she would make it,
although she pointedly said she would not eat it.
Funny
what one person will eat and another won’t. For our four-person neighborhood
event, I said I would buy a small jar of pickled herring—one of the ladies and
I both love it; the other and Jordan turned up their noses. But when Jordan suggested
goat cheese log with wasabi, the pickled-herring friend said, “I don’t eat
wasabi.” I’ll probably make it pesto instead of wasabi, but it’s good quick appetizer.
Just split a log, small or large, of goat cheese lengthwise, put wasabi (be cautious,
not too much—a wavy “S” pattern) or pesto down the middle, put the two sides
together again, and roll the log in toasted sesame seeds. So good. Are you like
me and have to toast two batches of sesame seeds because you always burn the
first one?
This morning
I was productive. I’m trying to clear the decks as it were as I prepare for the
holidays and try to focus more on my writing projects. The trouble is that I’m
programmed—there it is again, that routine I can’t let go of. I do this every
year, get so efficient about Christmas and all my projects that by about
December 10 or 12, my desk is clear and I wonder what I should do next. Too
close to Christmas to start a new project—but I have old ones in limbo I can
work on.
At any
rate, back to clearing the decks. Yesterday I wrote my December column for Lone
Star Literary Life. The schedule is changing so I’m not sure when it will appear,
nor when the January column will. But today I wrote the January column—I was on
a roll, with good material, and it flowed easily. So I wrote the publisher and
said I’d just written the most interesting column I’d ever sent her. And then I
said I’d send it in a few days, which made her laugh. But it was fun—two women
who team up to write fiction, and a woman who decided she didn’t need a super
sleuth but needed a team. If you don’t subscribe to this weekly free literary
newsletter, you might consider it. Just go to Lone Star Literary Life
Enough.
I’m written out. Going to calm myself with a book. Sweet dreams of sugar plums
and all thinks good.
