Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Bard Bloom's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, April 22nd, 2012
12:17 pm	Thater's Theta I intend to review free or cheap e-books if and only if I finish reading them. Here's one. The Gateway, by Glenn Thater, is not nearly as bad as I am going to make it sound. The spelling is fine, for one thing. The grammar is in pretty good shape as well, despite the occasional misplaced modifier. The vocabulary is used correctly, which it often isn't in stories like this. There are actually some decent prose. While pretty much every bit of the story is borrowed from somewhere, they're generally very good somewheres , and the author has not done us the disservice of crudely trying to file off the serial numbers. OK, it's intensely gaudy purple prose, but at least it's a nice shade of purple. But there are a couple of little issues with style and originality. And the fact that the story is basically a crude D&D module. And that the protagonist is so supreme as to make Mary Sue look like a mere ensign. And the fact that I am pissy today, and haven't done a hatchet job on anything in hours, so I'm going to do a hatchet job on this one. So there's this hero. His name is Angle Theta. And right there I've got a problem. That's highschool geometry for "some generic angle". Now, as far as I know, the guy is not an Angle (in the sense of being from Angeln or more broadly, Anglo-Saxon), nor an angle (in the sense of being a figure formed by two rays with a common starting point). He's not too generic either. According to the preface, he is "[the] ancient hero whom some scholars believe helped shape much of the ancient world and perhaps was the historical inspiration for the legends of Beowulf, Gilgamesh, King Arthur, and others". I can't imagine doing that unintentionally or unironically. Especially if my last name were "Thater", which I have to imagine being pronounced very much like "Theta". (For the record, I do have a super-powerful character who shows up in several of my stories and is basically my FurryMUCK character. It is the World Tree's fire-god Flokin. However, Flokin tends to show up in stories like Flokin and the Baker, in which Flokin tries to throw its divine power around, and winds up losing a contest with an otherwise unremarkable baker.) OK, so the plot is: there's this medieval-style country with a Christian-style church (of the gods Odin, Tyr, and Heimdall) in the far distant prehistoric past. As the story opens, the Lord of that country is getting wailed upon by mysterious mystical forces. No, I really mean 'wailed' -- a maleficient, skirling, bestial sound, akin to naught in nature and much in nightmare. A preternatural wailing it was, and in its wake bounded death. Then they all get slaughtered. The Lord's son, plus the hero Sir Gabriel and the superhero Lord Angle Theta, and a high-level cleric and a wizard with back problems and a bunch of fighters and rangers and stuff, go off to see what happened to them. They encounter a circle of massively-beaten ground with evil gold coins buried in it -- a growing circle, sort of like Zelazny's Black Circle -- and then go into some ruins, where there's somehow a portal summoning monsters and a couple of Lords of Chaos. Most of the heroes die, but Lord Angle Theta beats up the invaders and drives them back. Let's see. Religion: They seem to be worshipping Norse gods. They talk about Valhalla and stuff, plus use actual names. But the clerics are wearing Catholic-sounding stuff, and are "brothers" and "member[s] in one of the militant orders". And they've got names like Gabriel and Jude and Ector and Malcolm, which are, um, not your standard Old Norse names. And the clerics go around casting very D&D spells -- at one point one of them fries a fiend with a Flame Strike. Through Odin's grace, he summoned a roaring column of flame from on-high that engulfed one of the fieds. I am not Asatrar, but I dunno that I'd ever use a phrase like Odin's grace. History: Lord Angle Theta "Saved the world several times since [follower has] been with him. They say he even fought the old gods back in olden days" Skill Rolls: Lord Angle Theta identifies a magical effect more quickly than the wizard. A few pages later, he does better at tracking than a ranger. Ignoring the D&Diality of using D&D classes quite so literally -- one of the cardinal sins of game mastering is to have a NPC who is better than the PCs at the PCs' specialities. It sure looks like that here. Thater doesn't seem to want Theta to be inferior to anyone else in any way. We're also explicitly in HowardVerse at times: "... the reckless Valusian thrust maeuver taught him by Kull, king of that far-off land"" Rogue Gallery: We've got Azathoth (from Lovecraft), Arioch (from Moorcock), Bhaal (presumably an h-ified version of the Baal of the bible), Hecate (from Greece), and Mortach (whom I gather is the financial services advisor of Hell). Plus there's this Lord Gallis Korrgonn who reminds me a whole lot of Moorcock's Gaynor the Damned.) Evidently this is part of the Knight Eternal cycle, which somehow reminds me of Moorcock's Eternal Warrior cycle. Anyways, after reading the whole thing, I'm only about 88% sure that it's intended seriously. There are a few ironic hints, like a Princess Bride quotation or two. The prose is awfully purple. There are so many things lifted from easily-recognizable sources. So it might be a spoof. But my main feeling on reading it was "Yeah, Norse mythology is cool! D&D is cool! Moorcock is cool! Howard is cool! Zelazny is cool! Lovecraft is cool! I should reread those guys, not some third-rate pastiche of their works." (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, April 9th, 2012
10:52 am	Dragon Dreams I was interviewing for a job at the University of Florida -- not as a computer scientist, I think it was as a novelist in residence for the department of Literary Engineering. I was staying with an old friend loosely based on Mark Chu-Carroll, who was a tormented junior faculty member there. Very tormented! When we visited the used book store (where else do you take the candidate for novelist in residence?), our old quarrel came to the fore. When I knocked over a rack of SF paperback, he nearly killed me with a cardboard sword. On the way to the interview, I was walking with a couple of the senior Literature faculty in their splashy new high-tech Literary Research Center. (At this point I knew it was a dream. Literature *never* gets a splashy new high-tech center.) We got lost -- the Center was very very new. We left the building by a small side door to get our bearings, and found ourselves in a combination of an old graveyard and a bunch of pipes and tubes from the Chemical Engineering building next door. Strange howls arose, and the gnaun-beast came. At the urging of the senior faculty, we fled back into the Literary Research Center. A huge shaggy sharp-clawed lirthaunt occupied two-thirds of the lobby. "This would be much easier if I turned back into a dragon," I mentioned to my hosts. "That would prejudice the hiring process," they said. So we tried to escape out a different back door. A mighty sphynx with a flaming sword awaited us out there, and the great floods came. "I think we can reconsider that," said the senior faculty. So I turned back into a dragon. The sphynx sheathed her sword and turned away, pretending not to see me. "Get on my back. I don't usually let people climb on me unless I'm already working there, but I can make an exception now," I said. I took off, with the swirling brown water grabbing at my paws, and brought them to the safety of the student union. They were very grateful. I didn't much care. I wouldn't want to work in a place with such weaklings and cowards for senior faculty. Then the alarm went off. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
1:53 am	Mitt Romney's Tax Returns "We're not going to get into the game of once you give them something, they demand more," [Romney's aide] Ginsberg said. "This is a fulsome release and we're proud of it." Interesting choice of words there, "fulsome". From dictionary.com, the primary meanings of "fulsome" are: offensive to good taste, especially as being excessive; overdone or gross: fulsome praise that embarrassed her deeply; fulsome décor. disgusting; sickening; repulsive: a table heaped with fulsome mounds of greasy foods. excessively or insincerely lavish: fulsome admiration. encompassing all aspects; comprehensive: a fulsome survey of the political situation in Central America. abundant or copious. I daresay that the Romney aide intended 4, but the general reaction will be more of 1 and 2. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 2nd, 2012
11:32 am	Food: Romesco Sauce Whereas, the hour of the Mayonnaise is fading, fading, falling into oblivion and caloritude and large jars at cheap deli counters, wailing in its sorrow and oiliness; Whereas, the Mustard is as a ptarmigan lost and crying in the streets of Indianapolis, and full of woe therefrom; Whereas, the prophecied Remoulade, surrounded by the angels of gherkins and scallions and beansprouts and fennel and charming sausages, has not arrived; By the authority vested in me by the Great Colander of Coland, I hereby proclaim 2012 to be the Year of Romesco Sauce! The sauce that is sweet and sour, salty and spicy, aromatic and astronomical, and not ridiculous high in calories! First must be constructed The Raosted Red Pepper. (Beware! If it were roasted rather than raosted, Western Civilization as we know it would be in peril!) Acquire one red bell pepper. Slice it in half through the clapper with a violent and perilous knife, being careful not to cut Western Civilization in half at the same time. Using forceps and tractor-beams, place it under a brioler (not a broiler!) for a few minutes, until the skin is blistered. (Use of mustard gas or other vesicants instead is not recommended.) Let it cool, and flay the burnt skin from the flesh, following the style of that master-flenser and supreme torturer Bobby Flay. Then must be constructed The Roasted Garlic. Depaper several cloves of garlic -- no! no! More garlic than that! -- and slice it rudely into pieces the size of peices. Drown it in olive oil in a crucible, and place it into the oven and let it cook and roast for several minutes, until it has become Roasted Garlic. Then -- the hurling! Into a food processor the size of a vegetable, hurl the pepper, the garlic and its oil, and the other ingredients! These must include: A tablespoon or two of almond butter! The vinegar -- a vinegar of balsam, or of red whining, or, if you must, of sidereal cider. A teaspoon or two! To taste! A teaspoon of sesame oil! The orientalistic sort! A teaspoon of fine Spanish fine smoked fine paprika fine! A teaspoon of chili-garlic rooster sauce! A slice of the whitest white bread, so white that it receives invitations to join the Republican party, with the crusts removed! Salt to taste. Taste to salt. Salt taste too. Taste salt too! Two salt tastes Two taste salts. A dash of aji-no-moto if you are not afraid of it A tablespoon of tomato paste Anything else you feel inclined to add. Within the sacred confines of the food processer, let these ingredients be fooped unto a foopish foopedness! Taste them therewith, and correct the flavoring, so that it tastes like the Romesco Sauce of your desiring, or at least, more Romescan than anything served in the famed Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge. Then let this Sauce Romesco be served forth with steamed or zapped or raw vegetables, which are known as "crudites" by the crude, or with meat, or with fish, or with pizza, or with white chocolate ice cream, or with meatballs and pineapple sorbet New York style pizza from DiGiorno's, or even in a bowl by itself on the side of the counter and forgotten until after dinner. This is my firstmost and most first proclamation of 2012! Pray that I do not proclaim further! (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
10:44 am	Admiral Not-Kirk and the Deadly Death Ray Somebody likes Star Trek and space opera. Well, lots of people like Star Trek and space opera, and for some good reasons too. And some people write Star Trek fanfic, and that's just fine too. Right Ascension, by David Derrico, is not, technically, Star Trek fanfic. It is set in its own universe, and has its own characters. But there's a big dose of Star Trek in it: the characters fire phasers, there's the super-logical alien crewmember but the admiral who balances logic and emotion, there's the enemy computer defeated by telling it to find a solution to xn + yn = zn, there's the engineer who's "giving you all she's got, admiral", there's the final problem solved by reversing the polarity of the Quantum Refractor, there's the enemy race called the "Vr'amil'een" (which I have to pronounce "V'romulan") ... Sometimes I thought that it would be more honest to actually write it as honest-to-Borg Star Trek fanfic. But that might wipe out the E.E.Smith style bits, and that would be kind of a shame. I had to approve of the starship half the size of the moon with a population of half a billion, say. And it unironically uses the phrase, "deadly death ray". No, the actual problem with the book is the characters, who are pretty flat. The author sets up a very nice moral dilemma towards the end --- and everyone reacts in the same way to it. Not just everyone on the it's-not-the-Enterprise, but nearly everyone on Earth. Or, not-Kirk's son gets killed in chapter 1, and the book takes place in the week or two after that. He's clearly pissed about it, but doesn't mourn or anything. Anyhow, despite all that, it's not a bad book. The Amazing Events sometimes come off as reasonably amazing, and all the bits that I didn't recognize from Star Trek were original and interesting. It's written with love, if not with skill, and that's got to count for something. It's decent Star Trek flavored brain candy. Three phasers out of five. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 17th, 2011
4:45 pm	Dragon Romance Made Boring A war between dragons and humans, which will surely leave one of them extinct! A dragon and human in love! Wizardry! Transformation! What more could I want? Well, um, dramatic tension. This was a pretty boring story, and if I hadn't been on the treadmill for long enough to finish it, I probably wouldn't have bothered. Sorcha's Heart by Debbie Mumford is a lazy and unchallenging romance between a human girl and a dragon. Dragons and humans have been fighting, and the current king (all the humans seem to be in one country, and all the dragons live together too) seems determined to provoke a war which will surely wind up with the dragons getting wiped out. So Sorcha, girl wizard extraordinaire, goes on a quest for the Heart of Fire -- a quest which she accomplishes between page 3 and page 4. The dragon Caedryn (whose name my slapdash Welsh wants to translate as 'Take the deal') is there to claim it too. Sorcha snags it and puts it on, and it turns her into a beautiful pink dragon. Without the least hesitation, Caedryn flies her back to the ice aerie where all the dragons live. Events proceed romantically from there. All plot arcs are resolved with minimal effort or risk on anyone's part. There are a few surprises, but so quiet and bland and quickly-passed that they shouldn't disturb anyone in the slightest. We get to read a lot more of how horny Caedryn makes Sorcha than we do about, oh, that war to extinction between their species. At least he makes her horny in a lizardly sort of way, with scent more than appearance. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 24th, 2011
10:29 am	OOC: Thankful I am thankful... ... that our new Gworkan overlords have liberated us from the curse of freedom and self-rule. ... that our new Scientologist overlords have liberated us from thetans and engrams and stuff. ... that the Hadchad meteor left almost a quarter of the world habitable. ... that our new Ch'u'r'v'i'k overlords have solved the twin problems of human overpopulation and Ch'u'r'v'i'k dietary monotony. ... that Dr. Sinocter decided to accept the $100 trillion settlement rather than destroy "all [our] pitiful cities and habitations" with his Indigo Iridium Incineration Ray. ... that the unprecedented release of a toxic volcanic violet cloud happened in Mongolia and the death stuff hasn't gotten here yet. ... that the hideously costumed alien beings currently rampaging through New York City are simply emitting mind-destroying music, rather than the far worse horrors they are surely capable of. ... that Our Heroes warded off all of the preceding events, mostly at the last second, generally with the help of comic sidekicks and bland yet melodramatic background music. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 4th, 2011
10:42 am	Boring medical stuff, largely for my own records. I've been taking an assortment of medicine to deal with my blood pressure issues.  (I have both high and low blood pressure.)  The blood pressure meds, as of a couple weeks ago, were: Toprol, Norvasc, and Zoloft.   Yeah, Zoloft.  It, like other SSRI's, is primarily used as an antidepressant and mind conditioner.  But, like other SSRI's, it can be used to regulate blood pressure as well.  That mix of pills worked pretty nicely: my blood pressure was around 120/80, which is the high end of the desirable range or a touch above that -- about as good as I'm likely to get.   But SSRIs have substantial mental effects, even if they're being prescribed for something else.  Zoloft was, as far as I could tell, making me sleepy and stupid.  E.g., in the six months I was on it, I wrote about one novella's worth, and moved my bedtime an hour earlier, and came home from work early to collapse several times.  Also I was sort of emotionally flattened, if not outright depressed. Well, I really don't want to take stupid pills: if my brain's not working, I am very not happy. So I tried going off the Zoloft to see what would happen.   OW! My bloodpressure got very unhappy.  Usually it was in the 140/90-100 range, which is officially Bad ("stage 1 hypertension").  I was constantly dizzy, and feeling the world sort of pulsing around me.   On the other hand, I had a lot more energy.  I wrote most of a novella in that week, and it wasn't really a good time for writing. So I went to see my doctor, Dr. So.  She understands that I don't want the Zoloft side effects.  There are a few other choices of SSRI's.  We decided I'd go on one I hadn't tried before, Lexapro, to see what happens. Last night, I took a half-tab of Lexapro.  And today my blood pressure is back to a nice 120/80, and I'm barely dizzy at all.   So, it looks like I'm going to be on SSRI's for the long term.  (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011
6:46 pm	Cold Shell: Faerie Epoch, by Egan Yip The book starts off intensely enough. Then the scene changes to another dramatic beginning. Then there's another one, and another, and another. The last chapter, in fact, struck me as a pretty good beginning; it didn't share any characters from anything that came before. I would happily read any of the novels that started from any of these places ... but this isn't so much a single story as the beginnings of about six of them, held together with very light thread indeed. Most of the storylines are in a post-apocalyptic SFish future, in which people and animals have been replaced by robots ("Shell"). But a bit of it is in a fairyland of sorts, so I guess the "Faerie Epoch" bit makes sense. Rating: one protagonist lost in time, out of {one protagonist lost in time, a couple kids sneaking into a military base, a robo-Godzilla, a tyrannical wicked queen, and a wisecracking flying toaster.} This rating could get improved considerably if the other 80% of the book gets written. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 28th, 2011
5:35 pm	Herman Cain heaped scorn on the tiny but proud nation of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan a few days ago. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that the secret police of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, the dread Gestapo-pappo-bloppo-allegro-non-troppo, kidnapped him. Fortunately, he was rescued by the all-American hero ... well, the one formerly known as John Wayne before her gender reassignment operation. A whirlwind romance developed between the two as they raced over the Hima-laya-laya-laya-playa-gaya-zaya mountains, and as soon as they reached the hidden city Shangri-la-la-la-obladi-oblada, the two were wed. Their helter-skelter escape counts as their first honeymoon. Evidently it was not enough of one. Herman Cain and his new bride Jane Payne Wayne-Cain are now on honeymoon, again, mainly on the plains of Spain. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011
7:46 pm	Occasional Review: Starfish by Peter Watts I vowed that I'd review free e-books if and only if I finished them. This mostly means I'm not giving the "I hate it" kind of reviews; if I hate a book, I generally won't finish it. I hated Peter Watts' Starfish, but not in that kind of way. The situations and the science were interesting and engaging, and the craftsmanship of the book was good. But the characters, ow, the characters. The most likeable character in Peter Watts' Starfish is ... hm. That's a hard one. They're all pretty unpleasant. Decently well crafted, but, generally, vile people: [former] child molesters, evil industrialists, weak and evil psychologists, and, of course, the obligatory freelance submarine pilot. It's set in a nearly-ruined future world -- or rather, at the bottom of the sea there, at a power-generating station manned by cyborged workers modified to be under-ocean viable. For some reason, the top choice in cyborged workers are child molesters and people who were molested as children. The company that runs the power stations is pretty abusive too. Then there's the sudden surprising plotline, obliquely foreshadowed, about the primordeal RNA life from 3.5 billion years ago that only exists at the bottom of the sea, and will take over the world if it ever gets to land. (To land? But the oceanic ecosystems are at least as big ... never mind. The science in the books is generally good.) Anyways, I did finish this book. I don't plan to read the remaining books of the I-guess-its-a-trilogy-except-the-past-book-is-two-parts. Not that it was bad, really; it certainly kept me reading. But I didn't enjoy anything about the book, but I didn't not-enjoy it in the horribly fascinating way that makes reading top-notch cyberpunk and dystopian literature a valuable if uncomfortable experience. Anyways, I'd rank this three dead-eyed cyber-fish-people out of five. Which is an inadequate rating. If you enjoy reading about this kind of people, or about dark and horrible futures which are made much much worse by the story, then this would be 5/5; Starfish is an excellent example of the genre. If you find the concepts repugnant, then it's 1/5: that's what the book is about. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 22nd, 2011
11:28 pm	Home-Cooked Blind Dinner Vicki and I held our own blind dinner, which was sold at the Unitarian service auction for charity. This was like this dinner we ate out, only we were running it rather than eating at it. Our guests were blindfolded. Vicki and I were not -- we were busy in the kitchen and dining room! Unlike the Dark Dining event we went to, we focussed more intensely on food. We did not have live musicians, nor did we come around and caress our guests about the head and shoulders. Crostini: a very elemental crostini: Italian bread toasted crisp, rubbed with raw garlic and olive oil. The guests crunched the crostini in synchrony, as an introduction sort of thing. Soup: Roast butternut squash, carrots, ginger, cream. Tart: A little tart of goat cheese, caramelized onions, and smoked gouda. Salad: Mesclun, bosc pear, gorgonzola, pistachios, honeyed vinaigrette. Fish: Sesame slaw surrounded by: a tempura shrimp; a large scallop fried in butter; a slice of seared raw tuna with togarashi; a slice of smoked sable. Intermezzo: Spiced apple cider sorbet. Meat: Beef braised in port wine and ras el hanout, served with a reduction of its juices plus more port, honey, and rose water. Mashed potatoes and celeriac. Pea greens sauteed with garlic. Dessert:Chocolate-orange mousse. Vicki and I had lots of fun making it. I think our guests had nearly as much fun eatin git. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 25th, 2011
4:31 am	Dining with the Queen The Queen of England invited me to a pair of "small and informal" official dinners a week apart, for obvious reasons (or at least reasons that needed no explanation in the dream.) She was a large and solid woman of about sixty. The dinners were small and informal as royal dinners go: a dozen guests plus the royalty. The Queen, well used to these events, amused herself by asking questions of her guests. In the first dinner, she asked another of the guests -- an heir of the Carvel ice cream brand -- how to make sherbet, and, inspired, immediately ran to the kitchen and made some. In the second dinner, she asked me the most naive questions about role-playing gaming, which I answered, and somehow mentioned that gaming genres included Star Trek. "What is Star Trek?" she asked, and I did my best to answer. Somehow, my answer involved ice cream as an analogy. (Of course explaining Star Trek involves ice cream as analogy.) "What is ice cream?" the Queen demanded. I laughed -- "You know that one! Last week, you chatted with the heir of the Carvel brand, and you yourself made sherbet!" She laughed and hugged me. And stripped off her shirt. On the royal belly -- which was quite large and substantial and flabby -- were tattooed a dozen insigina and tokens: a Starfleet emblem for some particular ship; a square playing token from some elaborate wargame; a Warhammer 40K logo; a character portrait of her fighter-7/cleric-5 elf D&D character. Evidently, when she's not busy being royal, she's a very hardcore gamer. Too far away to invite to play with us, though. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
10:29 pm	Word of the Whatever: Naoi  Naoi means "temple", especially a Greekish sort of temple -- the dwelling-place of a god.   Do not accidentally write the N as a Y. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 7th, 2011
2:47 am	eeee, nightmare!  I dreamed I was at some sort of national electoral convention thingie, just on election day.   And one of the candidates for representative -- from district 3 in Washington -- had died before the election, but won anyways.  And they needed someone to fill that spot. There was a little checky-box on the order form (??) for if you were willing; the Democratic leadership would pick a willing person.  On a lark I checked it, figuring that there must be lots of people who would, mostly better-known to the Dems than me.  But, since this was a nightmare, I was the only one who did.  Then the terrifying part; calling dream-Vicki to tell her what I had done.  (She was amused, and thought that living in Washington DC for two years as a representative's family would be cool, btw.)    Still, I hate meetings, and two years of giganto-meetings, eeeeeee! (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 3rd, 2011
2:16 pm	Word of the Whenever: Ponent Ponent means "setting". It is applied to the setting sun. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 19th, 2011
10:34 pm	Wanion Word of the Whenever: Wanion: curse or vengeance. A relative of "wane"; from the phrase in the waniand mone -- in the time of the waning moon, viz. an unlucky time. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
7:19 pm	Food: Carbonnade a la flamande Carbonnade à la flamande: Acquire two onions by hopelessly archaic means. Destroyify them into little bitty bits. Hurl them with an iron fist into an iron skillet with iron olive oil, and stir them with an iron spatula until they are ironic and browned. Remove them, and entomb them into a slow-cooker. Acquire three pounds of beef fragments. Dredge them in flour, and give them the iron-iron-iron treatment too, so that they wind up in the slow cooker. Deglaze the iron skillet with 12 oz. homemade stout. That goes into the slow cooker too. Finally -- a cup of beef stock; some thyme, sage, and bay; a scoop of home-made concord grape jelly; a squirt of factory-made mustard. Cook all day. Spätzle: Two eggs. A cup of flower. A bit of salt, pepper, and nutmeg. A third of a cup of milk. Make a squishy dough or batter. Squeeze it through a big-holed colander into a cauldron of boiling water. Boil for a minute or two. Drain. This is done largely by beetiger and projectmothra. Cabbage and Apples: Chop at the cabbage! Chop at the apple! Cook at the brown sugar! Cook at the vinegral dash! Serve in a manner both Germanic and Belgian. For dessert there must be ice cream made by beetiger and projectmothra. No other dessert can reasonably follow this meal. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
8:39 pm	Feng Shui Assassin Feng Shui Assassin is a light-hearted story of holistic murder and New Age mayhem. And that ultimately makes sense. As any witch worth her salt knows, a power that can heal can also harm --- and so, if feng shui can bring good fortune and health, it can also bring ill fortune and death. So it's only a matter of degree to realize that Harvey Barker, trained in the East ... or at least in Chinatown ... out to avenge the death of his sister, can walk into an office, tilt a picture on the wall, rearrange a few letters and tape dispensors on the desk, and drive the tough businessman who works there to suicide in a matter of minutes. The police are, of course, baffled. Though Detective Constable Amanda Morgan pursues the case on the thinnest of leads, anyhow, despite being utterly out of her league. Not, of course, that Barker is the only alternative killer out there. He crosses paths with the Yoga Warrior and the Origami Killer and others. And finally with the ultimate villain: Papa Doc Duvalier, whose scheme to kill everyone in the entire world has one of the most novel and sensible motivations that I have ever read. Anyhow, it's a fun read, guaranteed to cheer you up on a sickday in between cups of kombucha and ginseng tea. The writing is energetic and serviceable. The characters are all stock characters, or New Age versions thereof, but not annoyingly so. The basic premises of the characters are silly (Feng Shui Assassin, indeed!) but they are taken seriously: the humor never gets in the way of the plot, and never degenerates into silliness. Some of the perils are quite imaginative indeed. I rate this one at four out of five homeopathically-charged crystals: quite an enjoyable read if you're in the mood. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 8th, 2011
11:11 am	Eggs Sardou a la Gargoyle This is a variation on the classic fancy Creole brunch dish, Eggs Sardou... rrai, not so much a variation as an adaptation to local conditions. Make creamed greens. I used chard, because the fresh spinach at the store didn't look that great and I didn't want to use frozen. Unlike some creamed greens recipes, do not add cheese -- or not much -- but instead use a Bechamel base, with a dash of nutmeg. This is not a meal of intense flavors exactly. Steam N artichokes. Eggs Sardou usually uses canned artichoke hearts, but whole artichokes did look good, so Rhys and I bought them and decided to figure out how to use them. When the artichokes are fully cooked -- no, a bit more than I had cooked them -- pull out the inedible inner leaves and the spiky bristly bits, leaving only the edible outer leaves and heart. And stem. Artichoke stems are good too. Make hollandaise sauce. This is a good thing for the 7-year-old to do, if you're making blender hollandaise anyhow. Fry N eggs. Poaching would be more classic, but by this point in the program I was feeling a bit pressed, and I am not so comfortable poaching eggs, so I didn't. Assemble! Have the 7-year-old make pools of creamed greens on the plates. (How can he work so hard and so carefully, and have them come out so lopsided? Amazing.) Stuff the fried eggs into the hollowed-out part of the artichoke, and close the leaves around it, so the egg is all but invisible. Have the 7yo place the artichokes delicately in the greens, and drizzle with some hollandaise, and put the rest of the hollandaise into individual dipping bowls (how can he do it so messily?). Summon the mother-in-residence to table. Surprise her with the hidden eggs. This is a fair bit of work -- it involves both hollandaise and bechamel sauce, plus artichokes, plus assembly. It took us about an hour and a half, I guess. It's a spiffy presentation piece though. It's also a bit unusual --- while it is a Creole classic and found in many major cookbooks, it's a lot less common to find than, say, Eggs Benedict --- so it's well worth your time to prepare it as a treat for the sort of person and occasion that appreciates that degree of fussing. (And who has the grace to ignore various flaws, such as slightly-undercooked artichokes and cold creamed greens.) (1 Comment |Comment on this)