Robynettely

The boy likes meat, and I'm meat ambivalent, which makes it kind of funny that he suggested bruschetta for this meal, and I suggested goulash. And I only wanted it because Steven Brust mentioned Szekely Gulyas on twitter maybe a week before. And I googled. The recipes: Stephen King's Transylvanian Goulash Rachael Ray's Bruschetta We did the first few steps of the goulash, which involved onions, bacon, and pork, and then wandered off for 45 minutes before coming back and doing the rest of the goulash and the entirety of the bruschetta. This was not the bruschetta he envisioned, I think. His dad must do bruschetta with cheese. We'll do that in a few weeks when we do Shakshuka again. I chose this goulash recipe because it looked like it took less than 90 minutes, and because it didn't have an instruction at the end to wait 24 hours and then reheat and add the sour cream and serve. We would have DIED of hunger if we'd done that. The boy was interested in...

The boy asked me a few weeks ago to teach him now to cook some things, but he doesn’t really have a plan, so I taught him to make a burger (the Rachael Ray way) and  Mediterranean chicken skillet (chicken, rice, veg). The first time I made that, he said "I get a WHOLE chicken breast?" He wasn’t very impressed with it when we were making it, though, because I couldn’t find the recipe (somewhere in a pile of torn out pages from magazines, in an ad for Kraft ingredients) so I did it from memory. There’s nothing wrong with my memory, but he said “It doesn’t seem very precise.” This is kind of similar to something my dad said to one of his wives, or maybe my sister: “Just follow the damn recipe for once, could you?”  Anyway, so I had this brilliant idea that you can’t really cook if you don’t know how to acquire ingredients.Thursday evening last week after circus, we stopped at the 24-hour grocery and bought the stuff to make a meal. I’d printed off the recipe so he could c...

“Deryni Checkmate” by Katherine Kurtz. . It’s sort of like reading a regency novel, but set in medieval times, plus magic. So much attention to clothes and furniture! The head-hopping seems alien to me now. Being the second book in a trilogy, this had no ending to speak of. The Deryni seem really Jewish. “Athyra” by Steven Brust. This is what I want to write like. He can get away with things because the voice is so strong. I love every time someone says something blah-blah-blah Sethra that doesn’t sound very characteristic of her, and then Vlad says “Sethra Lavode?” and the other person says “no, Sethra the Younger.” So stylish! That doesn’t happen in this book, by the way. “Orca” by Steven Brust. It was included in the same volume with the previous, so what choice did I have? I had to race through because I was being chased by Ed. Not that this is a problem, mind you. This was a really well-done example of interauthor, and worked really well. Maybe too much talking. The ...

First Draft “Before Breakfast”. Short story, not too long. Needs more character development though. “Milo”. Short story. I wrote the first draft on five envelope backs. “Wind/Water/Salt”. Writing missing scenes, adding characters. Editing “Wind/Water/Salt ”. Chapters 35 to 38 edited. Connecting -- Circulating 2 Knitting “Ceremonial Armour” (Kaffe Fassett, knit from a photo). Finished the body. Started tying in ends, then need to do edging and sew on beads, then block and it's done! It sounds so simple.   “St. Anthony’s Ribbon” (self-designed). I thought I was going to have to rip out a couple of inches, but after abandoning it for a couple of months, I decided all I needed to do was rip back maybe 30 minutes’ work and do shoulder decreases more rapidly. That was going really well so I went too far and ended up ripping out a bunch then doing the neck decrease and casting off. Now I need the needle that’s in Rust Damask Jacket,...