Winter Bootprints by Ann Horn
|
January, 2010
|
| If this letter does not display correctly in your email program, click to view the web version |
|
Please help the Matènwa Community Learning Center. Send aid straight to a remote part of Haiti that may not be reached by the big aid responses for weeks at best. Even one dollar can help. Learn more… |
Cowgirl Call to Action! Help for Haiti!| If you enjoy this newsletter and the Write 'em Cowgirls website, please tell your other writing friends about them. |
Dear Cowgirls and Friends,
It is the wee small hours of the first day of the New Year as I start the rough draft, one of those quiet nights when I can hear the owls hooting as I sit in my studio. I love it when they're out hunting close enough to hear.
Forging Ahead
The overall situation of my family rides a desperate edge. Happy seems a lot to ask for anymore, the way our luck is going, but I forge ahead, working on my make-the-world-a-better-place advocacy for solar cooking and trying this and that to give us a little more margin, while also keeping up my track towards my ultimate goal of popular fiction novelist. The fact I am headed into this year with a full novel draft at least gives me some hope that my long-term goals are still in the ranges of possibility, if we can struggle through the next couple of years and keep roofs over everyone's heads. I hope all of you can enter the New Year with happiness or if not that, then at least with some hope.
One of my new trails this year is the beginning of my three-year term as a member of the executive board of Solar Cookers International. I just attended my first quarterly board meeting by phone. The commitment to attend two meetings in person in Sacramento each year is a stiff one right now financially, but it is an honor to be invited and I feel that maybe I can do some good this way. I received enough Christmas resource from two dear ones to cover all of the April trip and some of the October one, so I'll hope for the best on squeezing out the rest by then.
I regret that accepting the board position is the final straw for my ability to attend the IWWG conference this summer (which begins in late July now, instead of June, and is moving to Brown University in Rhode Island), but I doubt I could have done it anyway. I still owe for part of last year's travel to the conference, and with the conference fee going up and airfares running considerably higher than last year's rates, it would hit close to 3K by the time trip, conference, hotels on the way in and out, and sundry travel expenses are added. That's a lot for someone with essentially no income. So unless a webring of mad freewriters discovers how cool my Deluxe Writing Prompts are, or some other business side of my life picks up, I'll just have to stay home that week and keep really, really busy. Sigh.
|
Focus by the Fire
January can be a bleak month in the north, but sunsets over snow can be so lovely, and for me it is one of the months when there are fewer calls from the outside world. Not much goes on in an Idaho garden in the dead of winter. The weather is usually too bad to make very many extra trips to town for socializing after the holidays, though I do make it to writing group unless there's an absolute blizzard blowing and authorities are asking people to stay home. It's easier to find more time to write in January, though this year balancing between the solar cooker book I have a commitment to try to finish and the novel I want to revise and the website pages I'm trying to finish getting up means I am going to have to keep a tight focus to accomplish as much as I'd like. (And then the earthquake hit…)
It's good to stick close to home this time of year. January is a time for comfort foods and reading favorite novels or new holiday gift books (hope you got some good ones—I am deep in the middle book of Kim Stanley Robinson's new trilogy), a time for focusing on goals and resolutions as the year starts fresh, a time for sitting cozy by the fire (real or proverbial) with people you love. I guess if you ski it's good for that, too, if you have more snow than we do right now. Here are some January words for you:
dreary blizzard new resolution stove ski quiet snowplow desolate beginnings comfort chili shelter pudding exposure chill soup windswept powder bitter peaceful snowdrift mac-n-cheese icicle skater dumplings sub-zero stew desolate hearth cuddle comforter snowman bitter snowball |
|
Pick one or two or a handful and take them out for a write. Then think about seasonal complications to throw into the mix. What twist could you put on an old classic like a broken leg on a ski trip? What if the person who broke the leg is the only one who can drive a stick shift and that's the only car they've got? Is someone riding a desperate edge watching all the usual Happy New Year foofaraw and whoop-ti-do wondering how on earth to be happy when it is hard even to hold on to hope? Or is someone struggling with a resolution that turns out to be harder than expected? What can you think of for a seasonal complication? Add a sprinkle of words to your complication and go for another write. (And if you are hard-core for nonfiction or memoir, what associations do you come up with using a few of those words, and is there a seasonal connection in there to add interest to a second write that goes further or deeper? These suggestions are not just for those who write fiction.)
Roots of Comfort
Whether it is due to the wind whistling around the corners, a surfeit of fancy holiday foods, or something buried in the mysteries of our genetic memories, simple comfort foods such as soup, chili, stew, grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, puddings, pancakes, etc. rate high with a lot of people in January. Many of those foods reach deep into our food-culture roots, back to times when we didn't have modern supermarkets with their overabundance of choices, their produce aisles overflowing with unseasonable fruits and vegetables. People in many parts of the world still don't.
Two hundred years ago, what most people had in January, if they had much of anything at all, were staple foods that stored well. You'd live on flour, grains, dried beans, nuts, raisins or other dried fruit, cheeses, root vegetables that can be stored such as potatoes, carrots and beets, and apples, which are just about the only fruit that cellars well for more than a couple of months. You'd have milk or cheese or butter if yours was a dairy culture and you took good care of your stock, and you might get the odd egg now and then if you took very good care of your chickens. Winter makes it easier to store meat without refrigeration because it will stay cold or frozen until you need it. Once the last of the cellared cabbage was eaten or had given up the ghost (cabbage will not cellar nearly as long as potatoes or carrots), you'd have sauerkraut and other versions of salted or dehydrated vegetables.
Almost every food I can think of that is commonly thought of as a comfort food has roots deep in a time before supermarkets and refrigeration and modern transportation. Back then, the comfort was likely still having something in the attic and cellar to cook and eat during the leanest time of year, and a mighty comfort it was. The roots of the comfort we take from certain foods may go deeper than we know.
|
Slow Cooking a Family Favorite
What is handy for the busy modern writer is that many of these foods can be prepared in a slow cooker (aka crockpot). With a little preparation time, which can often be done the evening before, if ingredients are then refrigerated, your supper is simmering into savory goodness while you are busy with your writing. There are many good slow cooker recipes on the Internet. If you go to my favorite recipes archive, Recipe Source, there is a sub-section in "Main Dishes" called "Crockpot Cooking" where you can find hundreds of recipes (and you can then search within that subsection by ingredients-in-title, like 'beef' or 'pork' or 'beans' or whatever you want to feature or whatever is on sale cheapest). Internet searches on "slow cooker" or "crockpot" + "recipes" will find you many more.
In the winter, when I am seldom able to cook with sunshine (some foods can be sun-cooked this far north in winter, but only if it is really clear, which it hardly ever has been in recent years), I often turn to my slow cookers to save on power and let me cook with less fuss. Fiesta Pork Stew, a recipe we love, is adapted from a recipe from a little old magazine. It quickly grew from a new find to an old family favorite. You could certainly use boneless chicken or turkey thigh meat if you don't eat pork, and still get a good result. This hearty but not too rich stew is comforting and sustaining on a cold day or night, and it freezes and reheats very well, so if your cooker capacity allows, you can make extra and set yourself up for one or more additional nights when you don't need to do too much to put supper on the table.
| Fiesta Pork Stew | ||
|
||
|
Use a slow cooker that holds at least three full quarts. Spray it with cooking spray or oil it lightly. Put in onions and garlic; top with pork. Mix cornmeal and dry seasonings; sprinkle over pork and mix well. Add beans, tomatoes, corn, and green chilies (consider chopping in a bell pepper or some roasted sweet red pepper, if you're not using chilies, to give it the flavor without the heat, or if peppers don't agree with you, add some celery or green beans). Mix well. Cook on high for 6–8 hours or low for 8–10 hours or some combination thereof. Stir briefly once or twice when the edge really starts to simmer, to make sure the pork and cornmeal cook evenly. Notes: This can be doubled in a five or six quart cooker (be prepared to hold back some of the liquid or one can of corn if it's only a 5 qt. capacity, or go a little light on the meat), if you want extra to freeze for future meals. If you'd rather use frozen corn, measure two cups the night before to thaw in the refrigerator and add 3/4 cup water or chicken broth to the stew. The cornmeal used as a thickener gives it a lovely subtle sweetness. Using the rice or quinoa gives it a little body and makes it a little less soupy. Good with cornbread, with a green salad or some orange slices or baby carrots on the side for color and freshness. |
|
Slow-and-easy Tapioca
Some people just don't like tapioca while others love the creamy, comforting stuff. I like tapioca a lot. My Grandma H. used to make such lovely, creamy, fluffy tapioca, served in a pretty footed ice-cream sundae glass, with real whipped cream and a cherry, redolent with the almond scent of the extra maraschino syrup Grandma knew I loved. I learned to make tapioca as a kid, from scratch or from pudding mix, and made it often.
I haven't made it much in recent years though, because of the tedious business of standing at the stove and stirring… and stirring… and stirring, all the while trying to resist the temptation to turn up the stove so high that some corner of the pot scorches from trying to hurry it along. That was before I learned how to make it in my slow cooker. Tapioca in a slow cooker does need an occasional stir, but nothing much compared to fussing over it on the stove, just a quick check-and-stir every half-hour or so. You'll have to find small or medium pearl tapioca for this, as I don't think the "Minute" kind would work very well. Our discount supermarket (Win-Co) sells small pearl tapioca in bulk, which is great.
| Slow Cooker Tapioca Pudding |
|
1/2–3/4 cup white, raw, or organic sugar 1/2 cup small or medium pearl tapioca 1/4 teaspoon salt 4 cups milk
2 eggs lightly beaten with 1/4 cup half-and-half, fat-free half-and-half, or additional milk
1–2 teaspoons vanilla 1/2 teaspoon almond extract |
|
Coat a 2–3 qt. slow cooker insert with cooking spray or butter it lightly. Add tapioca and sugar and mix. Mix in milk. If you like your tapioca with that slightly curded texture from the eggs coming to a boil, add them now. If you want it smoother and more custardy, add them later. Cover and cook on low for 5–6 hours or high for 3–4 hours. Stir every half-hour or so. If/when the tapioca starts glomming together, don't panic, just grab a whisk or a fork and whisk lightly and it will come apart and start looking like pudding again. Usually when it starts doing that it is getting close to done. The little tapioca pearls should look clear and the surrounding pudding should look smooth and creamy (but remember that it will thicken further as it cools and don't overcook it). If you are going for creamy with the eggs, add them about half an hour before you think your pudding will be done, whisking in briskly at first so they don't turn into an egg drop instead of creamy custard. Cover again and when you get a hint of a simmer at the edge, stir or whisk it one more time, cover it for a couple more minutes and consider it done. Turn off for a few minutes, stir in the extracts, and remove the cooker insert from the base so it will cool quicker or portion out into serving or storage containers (nothing wrong with eating it warm or at room temperature, but you don't want to let it sit out that way for too long). It will keep for up to a week in the refrigerator, partly depending on how quickly you cool it off and refrigerate it. This is good with or without whipped cream and a cherry. It is also economical and reasonably healthy as desserts go, at least if you think eggs and milk are good for you, which I do. 2% milk works fine, but it comes out on the thin side with Fat-Free (aka skim) milk unless you substitute fat-free half-and-half for part of the milk. |
Improve an Old Favorite
If you will be making pancakes or waffles on some of these frosty mornings, try adding a little vanilla to your favorite pancake batter, to give those tender hotcakes a very special flavor. You can also put a tablespoon of cornmeal or oat bran in the bottom of your measuring cup before you add the flour or pancake mix, for a little extra flavor and nutrition (I use the oat bran trick in almost everything I bake). If you are being extra-thrifty and you use canned fruit, save the syrup or juice it comes packed in to make your own pancake syrup. Add some brown sugar and maybe a dot of butter, and simmer it for a while to thicken (or use a tiny bit of cornstarch to thicken if you don't want it to get too sweet from simmering too long to thicken). Add any desired flavoring extracts, such as vanilla, almond, maple, etc., after you take it off the stove. Let your kids make up fancy names for the new concoctions. Serve up "Vanilla Peach Heaven" or "Maple Pear Delight" or "Teddy Bear Cocktail" pancake syrups. Store in the fridge but warm in microwave or a small pan before serving.
Whether you stir up pancakes from a recipe or a mix, a little vanilla will make them taste extra-special.
|
If you like hot cereals and porridges (my mixed-grain, fruited porridges are legendary), try cooking them in half milk and half water instead of just water. You have to watch a little closer so they don't boil over or scorch, but the milk increases both the quantity and the quality of the protein, and your porridge will be creamier and more delicious. I like to mix grains, but one of my favorite single-grain hot cereals is called "Cream of the West". It is produced in Montana, from hard red Montana wheat, and it's like a whole wheat cream-of-wheat. Easy to cook and eat and very flavorful and healthy if you can find it where you live or somebody sells it online. It's very good with the half-milk trick, too, and snipped dried apricots are a great addition.
So curl up with a comforting bowl of stew or tapioca or porridge, or a steaming stack of pancakes, while winter winds howl outside the door, and then when you are finished, before you give in to that urge to close your eyes, go for a write with "comfort food" or your own favorite comfort food(s) as your springboard. Go for the roots.
New Journals for Old Memories
Speaking of writing, since we are all writers, did anyone get any new notebooks or journals for a holiday gift? (Even if you don't need them, thank your friends or family, because it shows they believe in you and care about your writing interest.) I received two with cool cloth covers, handmade specially for me by my granddaughter's roommate, who came to our Christmas because she wasn't able to go home this year. They are so sweet I cried. One of them she stitched up with graph paper inside, just when I needed to start a timelines notebook for my Feldrea series, and how perfect is that? Not to mention that the color of the fabric goes perfectly with the spool-knit tube I'm making that I plan to felt down and coil-and-stitch into a book/writing bag someday.
|
One interesting journaling idea I read a year or two ago is to start separate memory journals for different periods of your life. I received a journal around that time from a Roots & Shoots club I did a solar cooker project with, one of those cool made-from-recycled-parts journals. I began to journal in it my very earliest memories, years 0–5 or so. It is amazing the small details that come back when you start remembering the big ones. Now I have lots of little bits and stories and even a diagram of my grandparents' apartment in that journal. If any of you are doing themed journals or have ideas for journal themes, I'd love to hear about them.
Another thing you can do with a new journal is to dedicate it to "Lists of 100", a concept I picked up in a workshop by Mary Reynolds Thompson. I covered that one in the first issue of this newsletter — if you weren't subscribed at that point, you can read more about lists as a writer's aid at http://write-em-cowgirls.com/wec/express/200908.html. Suggestions for list topics include, but are by no means limited to, places where something important happened to you, things you are glad you've learned (or otherwise), foods that you love, and people you admire. Lists can be very powerful for invoking our powers of association.
Site News
| Space. Inner, outer, interior, exterior. Space is everywhere. We live in it, breathe it, move through it, wake in it, sleep in it, explore it. Enter Space 1, to explore from the comfort of your writing chair… |
We survived the holidays at our place, though it was hectic, and we are forging ahead with site additions and improvements. The new gallery, Space 1, is up, as is the Writing Links page. If you are on this list and you would like your link on the Links page, drop me an email with the link and I will check it out. Ditto for if you have favorite resources you would like to see there, but you need to tell me something about why you like them. Next I'll be working on getting "Writing for Dollars" finished and up, as well as a page about "Sharon's Picks" and how they might benefit you and your writer's life. I'll wade through to the "Writers' Kitchen" and "about me" parts yet!
A Noveling Boost
|
|
|
I've managed to spend some more time with Holly Lisle's How to Write Page-Turning Scenes, and it is definitely another Holly Shop winner. It gave me a whole new take on the complex topic that is referred to in the semantic shorthand of the writing community as "conflict," which in a practical literary sense has more to do with change and challenge than it does with, say, quarreling. If I do make it as a paperback writer, I will have Holly Lisle to thank. For me, the Create A Plot Clinic has become the most important single resource for novel writing that I own or know of, paper or e-book, but How to Write Page-Turning Scenes is a wonderful companion book for the Plot Clinic, as is the Create A Character e-book.
Holly's style, as always, is practical. She gives clear tips and examples that help you put them to work right away (write away?) in your own stories. Some of her examples are on the rugged side, but she does give alternative examples in many cases to show how the point in question might work in a gentler kind of story. Learn how to deal with "boring" story transition points using just two sentences. Get these resources and you will never again have to struggle through any "boring" stretches in your novels! If you want to write popular fiction stories that will hold your reader's interest (always considering that that "reader" may be a prospective agent or publisher) and you want to write and edit efficiently, professionally, and with greater confidence, it is hard to go wrong with Holly Lisle's learning materials. They are all giving me such a boost, and heaven only knows some of the rest of my life is hard enough right now that I can use one.
Learn and Share Online
I've been spending some time on a couple of the new forums at the Writers Digest Community site, to see what they are like and to let writers there know about my website (waves to some new WD list members). My short-form opinion on the main forum and Fiction Group forum is that there is a good writers-helping-writers spirit and mostly friendly folks and it is an interesting place to discuss aspects and issues of writing. It is on the glitzy side (all the pictures and ads do make it slower to load if you don't have a great web connection), and not private or under-my-control enough that I would consider it a safe place to post original work for critique, since you can only edit a post for fifteen minutes after posting, and after that you cannot change or remove your post, and no password is required to view. For posting original work, I would go to Forward Motion (register so you can see and post to the good stuff), to preserve my right of first publication. You can read a little more about the Writers Digest forums and Forward Motion on my new Writing Links page.
Here's a spot of color for a dull winter day and one more writing prompt. What might a fictional character of yours be doing with one of these bottles? Or, if you tend towards memoir, look through your memories for one involving an unusual bottle and take it out for a write.
|
Another place I've spent some time lately is WikiHow. This website is a resource and an opportunity for writers. If you—or one of your characters—needs to do something you don't know how to do, whether it is survive in federal prison, apply makeup, cook in an indoor fireplace, operate a circular saw, or any of thousands of other things, you can go to WikiHow to find out how it is done. If you know how to do something that isn't covered already or can add to an existing article to improve it, and you would like to practice some simple, straightforward how-to writing while helping (among other things) to broaden this useful resource, you can add to the knowledge pool. Study the style and guidelines carefully before you post. One good way to ease in is to add to the "Tips" sections of existing articles, if you have something to contribute. You may even find yourself contributing to the database of useful information for the One Laptop per Child Association. Be careful though. While useful, WikiHow can also be very addictive.
 February 2, 2001 Winter sunset from my deck.
|
Express Delayed for Haiti Aid
I am sorry this issue of the Express is so late. My life has been so full of work and worry for my friends at Matenwa in Haiti that even the Express had to take a back seat this month. While I try to make each piece better than the last, I apologize for any rough edges in this one. This was not quite the uneventful month that January so often is for me, as it turned out.
There are updates from Haiti on the new crisis page on Write 'em Cowgirls. Please take a look if you haven't already or if you are interested in the updates. If you possibly can, go make a donation, even if it is just one dollar through PayPal. It all adds up. Please tell your friends there is a way to send aid directly to a Haitian place that the big aid efforts will not reach until it is too late. (There are other similar small oranizations with ongoing projects who are on the ground in Haiti and could use similar help. Learn more in the updates.)
I wish you whatever happiness and hope you can find in the coming year, and love always. Write on, my friends, shining trails of words to the future. Your vision is depending on you.
|
Best Regards, Sharon |
|
P.S. Creativity kudos this month go to Samuel R. Delany's young emerging writer self. He finished the novel The Jewels of Aptor in 1961, at the age of 19, and it was published the following year. It is a stunning and exquisite work of speculative fiction, intensely creative, with a lot of story packed in that slim binding.
In 1966, he published Babel 17, one of my all time favorite works of science fiction, a book I have read again and again. In Babel 17, Delany explores issues that lie at the heart of my science fiction interest: how will the changes of the future (or possible changes of possible futures) change who we are, how we relate, how we be? While some science fiction stories are just basic plots with fancier gadgets, Babel 17 is a rich exploration into how we are shaped by the jobs we do, the tools we use, the people with whom we work, and the social strata in which we operate, but it doesn't stop there. Babel 17 delves deeply into how we are shaped by the very language we use or how learning a radically new language might change us.
This book gives (gave?) new meaning to the term speculative fiction, and it does it with a rousing good tale, jam-packed with one of the most engaging casts of characters it has ever been my pleasure to meet. So big, if somewhat belated, creativity kudos to Samuel R. Delany, for a book that has given me many, many hours of thought and pleasure.