Branching out with my writing
7 Barriers to Writing You Can Leap Over Today
This post also provides a fix for each barrier. I’m printing out this one.
Bravo, Write to Done.
I really had no choice.
It’s officially apple season and the golden delicious tree is burgeoning.
So, last Sunday I slapped together an apple crisp sans recipe, though my trusty assistant in culinary crimes–my wife and herder of Buddy the Rescue Dog–pulled up an Epicurious recipe for a crust topping as a guide. For the filling, I just knew what ingredients I wanted and went from there.
Result: a caramelly ooze —gee, go figure, when the cook indiscriminately tosses in plenty of brown sugar and enough flour…well, there were the sweet cherries and their juice, and the chunks of golden delicioius–well, you get the picture… and the crust was as good as the apple-goo.
Autumn…I love you.**
***
A few days later, within hours of finishing the crisp, and with plenty of Act of Kindness Writing chores I could/should be dealing with, it was time for an apple cake…or, as the recipe calls it, a ‘moist’ apple cake.
On its own, this is a ‘will bake again’ item. As always, though, I did stray ‘just a bit’…
**“No, deeeear! I don’t know anyone named Autumn!”
2. Best way to get rid of the redolent odor of wildfire smoke in your kitchen? Four batches of roasted tomatoes, with generous supplies of garlic chunks, rosemary sprigs, etc. [It ain’t pretty here in Oregon right now…]
3. And then there’s this: Do you think dogs lying peacefully on the floor know the difference between our giving them half our attention [one hand scratching their chin and one hand clicking links or entering a passcode] vs. our full attention? Do we send out a ‘semi-distracted’ vibe when we are, in fact, semi-distracted?
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
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Directions:
*Cutting the oil in half barely changes the final result.
So, back to procrasticooking... Result: 35 new recipes in 30 days. Note: A few sites were repeated. Hard not to fall back on epicurious.com.
Discoveries:
1. I’m not sure I followed any of the recipes to their exact specifications. More and more, I’ve been treating recipes as general guidelines rather than strict instructions.
2. I ‘created’ a few of my own — simple ones where I combined new ingredients/seasonings. Example: Avocado oil-roasted potatoes with a favorite Moroccan spice mix, ras-el-hanout.
3. New cooking questions arose in that vast abyss otherwise labeled ‘my brain’, like…if I oil the veggies before seasoning them for roasting, will the oil serve as a barrier to absorption and reduce the flavors? And no, I stillhaven’t looked it up. Sometimes, you just want a mystery to linger.
4. Oh, lord, some of those recipe sites take *forever* to load up all the ads and videos. I know these folks want to make a little money, but I had no problem just closing them up and looking for faster-loading alternatives.
5. Despite the physical separation from my writing tools and settings, I did get some good prewriting and first draft material churning as I cleaned up afterwards.
6. Speaking of clean-up, yep, even with my wife doing her part, dishes and counter mess were the bane of my existence. I even took a couple of days off in mid-challenge just to dodge the scrub-and-soak-rinse-and-repeat detail. Plus, the horrors of dishwater hands…
7. Some utensils, pots, and dishes never really made it back to the cupboards. They were used, washed, air-dried or towel-dried, and put back to work.
8. Based on my ratings below…well, I’m easy to cook for.
9. Even after the challenge, I can’t seem to stop cooking new stuff. Just yesterday, on a whim, I baked a mango pound cake from Pati Jinich and made my version of Mexican street corn grits . Someone! Please stop the madness.
10. There was an added challenge this year…My gastronomically-devoted ‘shoo! chef’, Buddy.
Passing through the work area, my wife would step around our furry child and mutter, “not quite a certified kitchen, I see.”
Here are my first five recipes with a few added comments, a letter grade, and a ‘Yes’ [would repeat this recipe] or ‘No’. Note: The letter grade is just as much a comment on how well I delivered as a cook as it is on whether I liked the recipe itself.
Links to procrasticooking:
https://www.instagram.com/procrasticooking/?hl=en
https://procrasticooking.wordpress.com
http://www.bakingequalslove.com/2014/10/procrasticooking-grilled-paneer.html
Found some folks who:
A. are under 65.
B. are oblivious to COVID-19.
C. don’t catch me stacking the deck.
D. resent the use of the word ‘kitty’.
E. prefer the phrase ‘poker paws’ to ‘poker hands’.
F. don’t notice their winnings have vanished after my hourly ‘Squirrel!’ call.
1. Yep, I’m all for health and safety precautions in these Covid-19 times, but a news article reminded readers of the health risks of face-fondling and offered some solutions.
Another solution…masks. And really, wouldn’t it make life more interesting?
2. As for the article itself, nowadays, it’s not all that easy to find a straightforward objective just the facts, ma’am’ article. Everything has morphed into ‘commentary’, ‘analysis’, or ‘opinion’. Gggaaaaaahhhhh! Just give us information! [and without the ‘Breaking news!’ notices…]
3. Please don’t make me compare ‘apples’ to ‘oranges’. It’s just not fair to either one.
4. Used car prices…insane.
You expect me to match your price for that unsafe-at-any-speed death trap with mushy brakes and a not-as–serpentine-as-it-should-be belt? I’ll show you*…right this minute I can saunter into a showroom and pick up a new model, complete with the dozen soon-to-be-released-at-inconvenient-intervals recall notices.
5. We can put a man on the moon, but most veterinarians still prescribe those insane, post-surgery e-collars. The poor dog is probably groggy and waaay unsettled and the technician snaps that opaque inverted dome around the patient’s head. Yep, real vet training would include putting students inside one of those for a day and expect them to follow through on daily tasks–yes, all daily tasks–and then sleep through the night.
6. And those dumb hypersensitive Chromebook/laptop track pads? One brush of my lithe and slender pinky knuckle and, unbeknownst** to me, the cursor wanders off to some obscure location in my latest masterpiece. At least with handwritten work, there is no roving cursor to track down. And if there is, well, I have bigger problems.
* Who is ‘you’, anyways?
** Hey, when I use the word ‘unbeknownst’, you know I’m fired up!
Interesting related item: How to Write Like a Dog
My research also led to https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ . It’s all about spoilers and avoiding distasteful [subjective term, of course] events in entertainment media. Honest, I turn to the last page of a book about dogs. If it’s not still alive, I’m outta there.
Word Inventions