Third time really IS the charm

That's it. After 51, 922 words (some of which need to rewritten because they're sooooo bad), I got nothing. I'm all written out. I'm going to bed.

Thankful

Today I'm giving thanks for the wonderful man I married, who called me at work yesterday and said, "There's a surprise for you at home."

It's a theremin. We now own a theremin, as well as three guitars, a mandolin, a bodhrain, an Irish whistle, a nose flute, maracas, a kazoo, a piano, a couple of harmonicas, an electronic keyboard, a recorder, an autoharp, and a didgeridoo.

What kind of a husband buys a theremin without consulting his wife first? Only the best one in the world!

Happy Thanksgiving, Sean. For you I am truly thankful.

Tagged!

Lucy has tagged me twice and it's time to respond. First up, my five favorite books:

My favorite book for many, many years -- probably about 30 -- has been The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I still think it's a nearly perfect novel, with wonderfully idiosyncratic characters, a thrilling plot, and laughs galore. My father read the paperback when it was first published and passed his copy on to me after reading a few choice passages aloud and seeing how enthralled I was. I still have that beat-up old paperback, along with just about every other English-language edition of the book that has ever been published. I've read it fifteen or twenty times, and I think I discover something new to love about it with each rereading. Don't think you know the story if you've only seen the movie.

Another book I inherited from Dad and have reread many times is Anne Hobbs's memoir, Tisha. In the 1920s, 19-year-old Anne moved from the bustling metropolis of Denver, Colorado to itty-bitty Chicken, Alaska with the plan of becoming a schoolteacher. Tisha is the story of the year she spent living and working in Chicken, of the incredible racism and sexism she encountered, and of the love she eventually found with a half-Eskimo (and thus unsuitable) man. It's a book that's filled with adventure, humor, righteous outrage, and love of all kinds. In her own way, Anne Hobbs was heroic and I really responded to that.

Can I count the Little House books as one choice? They, like all the other books on this list, were stories I read again and again, both as a child and later as an adult. I enjoy seeing the books mature as Laura does, changing from very simply-written to much more sophisticated books as Laura grows up. Ma and Pa were my role models: between the two of them, it seemed, they could do anything that needed doing. I loved their can do/make do approach to life -- they may not have had any other choice, but I liked their attitude. I read the books all out of order the first few times and only owned a couple of them as a kid; when I started working in a bookstore during college, one of my first treats to myself was to buy the hardback editions one at a time and read them in order.

I've been a horror fan since I was a child, and Stephen King's Salem's Lot was the first adult horror story I read -- I think I was about 13. I loved it because it terrified me, and King managed to terrify me because he rooted the story (as he does much of his fiction) in the mundane, ordinary details of everyday life. He established this workaday world in which vampires could not possibly exist... and then he made me believe in vampires. I've read many of his books since then and enjoyed most of them, but Salem's Lot is one of only a couple I've reread and it will always be my favorite Stephen King story, as well as one of my all-time favorite books.

So here we are at number five and things are getting tougher. Do I say The Compleat Practical Joker by H. Allan Smith or Maybe He's Dead by Mary Ann Madden? A Little Princess or Harriet the Spy? It's tough, but since my guiding factor in compiling this list seems to be rereadability, I'm going to go with Panati's Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything & Everybody by Charles Panati. It was published as a companion to The Browser's Book of Beginnings, which far outsold Endings but utterly paled in comparison to content. Endings is the perfect bedside or bathroom read, full of repellent, unnerving, horrifying, and sometimes just melancholy information on things like killer diseases, capital punishment, extinctions of all kinds, deaths of famous persons, bygone sexual practices, and the fascinating evolution of graveyards into memorial parks. When Norman once asked me, "I wonder if there's a cure for syphilis?" this is the book I looked in for the answer, and it did not fail me.

Lucy also is wondering what my favorite comfort movies are. My list, in no particular order, is brief:

While You Were Sleeping
Moonstruck
Unfaithfully Yours (the Preston Sturges version)
When Harry Met Sally
The Apartment

Sometimes I also find Jaws soothing, but not always.

It's funny because it's true

Book-of-the-week

This is news? Oh wait, the author is talking about height. Never mind.

Definitions

Today I heard the word crap defined as "poor man's kitsch." Collecting kitsch is out of my price range, but I can still afford to amass crap.

Cooking disaster

Maple sponge: it's not what's for dinner.

For those of you just joining us, a little background: I found this recipe for maple sponge, in my grandmother's handwriting, in my mom's old recipe box. Here's how Gram had written the recipe down:

MAPLE SPONGE (6 servings)

1 envelope Knox gelatine
1/2 cup cold water
1 1/2 c Br sugar
1 c boiling water
whites 2 eggs
1 cup chopped nuts
dash salt

Soak gelatine in cold water 5 min Put sugar + hot water in saucepan bring to boil and let boil 10 min. Pour syrup gradually on soaked gelatine cool + when nearly set add stiffly beaten egg whites + nut meats, put in mold + chill.
Custard:- 2 egg yolks, dash salt, 1 tbl sugar, 1 c milk, 1/2 tsp vanilla

I was intrigued by the minimalist ingredients, the simultaneously specific yet vague instructions (what was I supposed to do with that custard?), and the raw eggs. I decided that this would be my entry in Retro Recipe Challenge #4: Go on the hunt for old recipes that work well in fall. The word "maple" conjured images of a New England autumn for me. The presence of a jello mold promised festivity. I had no idea what this dessert was supposed to be -- brown sugar gelatin? -- but I thought I'd give it a whirl.

RRC4 requested a couple of things I can't provide, like the year this recipe was first published and where it came from. I have no way to prove it was originally published between 1920 and 1980. All I can say is, look at the recipe card:

It's made out of some thick, manila-colored paper and Grandma's handwriting is starting to fade. I'd say that Maple Sponge reeks of 1960s culinary folly. I'm guessing, of course, because I don't remember Grandma or anyone else ever preparing and/or serving this dish.

I was confused by the directions for custard at the end. Was I supposed to pour it over the prepared "sponge" or mix it in? It was typical of both Gram and Mom to omit such directions. I read the recipe over the phone to my sister Mary, who's an excellent baker, and she thought the custard should be mixed in. I agreed and set about preparing Maple Sponge.

It mixed up easily enough, although the brown sugar/gelatine combination didn't seem to be setting very well and the whipped egg whites refused to be incorporated. I ended up dumping the maple mixture, egg whites, and custard mixture into a big bowl and attacking it with my hand mixer. Everything resolved into a thick, creamy, light brown mixture that I poured in the jello mold and put in the fridge to set. After it had been chilling for ten minutes or so I remembered the chopped walnuts. I opened the jello mold and saw that the contents were really starting to firm up, so I just sprinkled the walnuts on the surface, hoping they would sink into the sponge but knowing they would probably stay right where they were. I let it sit for another hour or so.

When I unmolded it, the maple sponge was an unholy mess. Shall we take a look at it?

Looks kinda like a messy pumpkin pie, right? That light-colored stuff is the beaten egg whites, which separated from the rest of the sponge and floated to the top of the mold -- when I unmolded the gelatin the meringue of course got flipped to the bottom, taking on the appearance of a pie crust. Good thing the egg whites stiffened and set, because they're the only thing keeping the runny goo in the center from pouring out all over the counter.

I gave Sean a serving (meaning I plopped a mound onto a saucer; a bowl would have been a better choice) and asked him to give me his honest opinion. He took a bite and declared it "slime-alicious." Later he described maple sponge as "flan's northeastern bastard stepchild." He asked me what I thought, so I tried it myself. The first word that came to mind was "foamy." I knew exactly which ingredients had gone into the making of it, yet the result didn't taste much like any of them. I can best describe the gooey center as tasting like dark Karo syrup and an overpowering amount of vanilla whipped to a frenzy. The whole mess went into the trash. Then we each enjoyed a slice of lemon cake that Sean had picked up at the supermarket.

Monday morning miscellany

Wow. Everything was going so well and then... I forgot to post on Saturday. It was practically the first thing I thought of yesterday and it really pissed me off: I'm out of NaBloPoMo. I was so irritated that I refused to post anything Sunday. Today, though, I feel a sort of zen calm at having let go of one of my month-long obligations. But I still have NaNoWriMo and the Retro Recipe Challenge to accomplish so I'd better not relax too much.

I had lunch with Lucy on Saturday and got to hear first-hand all about her fabulous road trip through South Dakota. (No, "fabulous" in the same sentence with "South Dakota" is not an oxymoron.) She bought me a copy of The Little House Cookbook while on her journey, and I can hardly wait to recreate some of Laura's and Ma's recipes.

Yesterday Sean droppped me off at the library while he did some shopping. This doesn't sound like such a momentous event, except that I haven't patronized a library in over ten years so it was a bit of an outing for me. I'd forgotten how good a library can smell, with the old mixing with the new. I got myself a library card and actually checked out a book, a slim volume on telepathy that I'm using for research for my NaNo novel. Telepathy! I'm telling you, my novel has everything: telepathy, sex, home canning, classroom management, witchcraft, American Girls dolls, and much more. I will need to do some further research for upcoming scenes, including one set in the visiting room of a jail; fortunately, I think I may know some first-hand sources for that topic.

Also yesterday, I saw Little Children. I don't know if this movie is on your radar, but it has been the movie I'm most interested in seeing since it opened a couple weeks ago, and I urge you to catch it. The guy who wrote the novel it's based on also wrote Election, and Little Children has a bit of that story's dry humor. But this new movie has a uniquely unsettling, unpredictable plot and across-the-board stellar performances, particularly one by Kate Winslet. (Can you imagine any other actress willing to admit onscreen that she's larger than a size 2? Kate Winslet, I will love you forever for that.) Jackie Earle Haley, who most folks best remember as bad boy Kelly Leak in the original Bad News Bears movies, appears here after being absent for years from the big screen; his performance as a sexual deviant is both disturbing and heartbreaking.

And last night was a first: I dozed off BEFORE Desperate Housewives started, instead of half an hour in. I think my transformation into cranky old man is complete.

Three-word review: THE RETURN

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Feedback

A few days ago I gave Norman the first twenty or so pages of my NaNoWriMo effort. Yesterday he emailed me and wrote, in part, "I read the first installment of your story last night, you filthy, filthy degenerate. Notwithstanding your anti-billowing curtains mandate -- they would, I suppose, only get in the way of that warm, enveloping night air -- I didn't expect certain key scenes to be as specifically graphic as they were. I don't know if I under- or overestimated you, but in any event, I'm not complaining."

I'm guessing he liked the no-nonsense, romance-free sex scenes.

Just trying to fill the time...

I asked someone, anyone, to stop me, and no one came forward. Thus, I have done it again: as if the rigors of NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo aren't enough, I've now decided to enter Retro Recipe Challenge #4: Fall Favorites. Fortunately, this is a one-shot deal. I just need to make a fall recipe first published between 1920 and 1980, then take a picture of it and blog about it. I have until next Wednesday to complete my assignment.

I could look around online for a suitable recipe, but I thought it would be more fun to page through my extensive cookbook collection. The problem is, I don't have any cookbooks published before 1986. Then, in an "Aha!" moment, I decided to look through my mom's old recipe cards -- I knew I'd find lots of ancient stuff there.

The main thing I noticed, when going through Mom's recipes, is that I recognized very few of them. I don't think she ever made about 90% of the recipes she collected. Like mother, like daughter -- I found it very reassuring. I also noticed that my father seemed obsessed with his mother's chocolate cookies; I found no fewer than three separate recipe cards for them in Dad's handwriting.

Pictured above are recipes for the Christmas cookies Mom baked every year (ingredient #1 is one pound of confectioner's sugar); cream caramels, which Mom never made, though my grandma often did at Christmastime; sour cream raisin pie, in my Aunt Kathleen's familiar scrawl; maple sponge, whatever that is; and an apple noodle kugel. I'll probably make one of the latter two recipes for the challenge. I'm leaning towards the maple sponge because it sounds so odd and will require the purchase of a gelatin mold. That recipe is in Grandma's writing but I don't recall her ever making it; reading over the ingredients and instructions, I'm surprised anyone ever made it, let alone consumed it. Raw egg, anyone? Then again, our apples are just about ripe, so the kugel may win out. (To see the actual recipes for maple sponge and cream caramels, look here.)

Where have all the smorgasbords gone?

Yesterday I read that Beadle's Cafeteria in Pasadena closed after fifty years in business. They were right down the street from work and I would occasionally go there for lunch. The main reasons I ate there -- there was never any waiting in line and the lunchroom was quiet so I could read in peace -- proved to be presages of Beadle's demise: almost nobody was eating there, and the few who were were generally, well, old. The place definitely was not attracting a young new clientele. Beadle's was tucked in the ground level of a parking structure in the middle of a busy city block, and I'll bet not many people even knew it was there. The food was never that great (although they served excellent chess pie), but it was inexpensive and fast and reliable in a mediocre sort of way.

When I was a little kid, my family used to drive out to Claremont every once in a while to eat at a great old smorgasbord called Griswold's. Right at the head of the buffet they served little cubes of red jello, and my sisters and I liked to put them on the warm plates and watch them melt and slide around while we finished loading up; we'd end up with pink juice oozing into our mashed potatoes and Swedish meatballs. Attached to the restaurant was a bakery that sold Scandinavian pastries and smelled just heavenly -- we'd wander around in there while waiting for our table, then invariably visit again after dinner to buy something we'd spotted earlier. Griswold's is now a Buca di Beppo.

Years and years ago there was a smorgasbord called, I believe, Smorgy Boys next door to my current place of employment, where I have worked since 1985. The buffet closed a few years before I started working next door, but their sign remained up for quite some time after that. During my first few years on the job, every now and then some distraught person would come into the bookstore and want to know what had happened to Smorgy Boys -- invariably they had driven from some faraway place with their young family, wanting to share with their own children a restaurant they'd loved as a kid, only to find it boarded up.

All we've got now is Hometown Buffet. Times is hard, man.

Share and share alike

Last night I went out to dinner with Norman and Curtis. Norman and I, as you may recall, have that little bet going about him finishing his screenplay and I my NaNoWriMo project by the end of November; Curtis is also doing NaNo. In fact, Curtis and I had exchanged our respective stories-up-to-that-point on Monday night and we discussed them over dinner yesterday.

I would looove to talk about Curtis' story, but it's not mine to discuss in detail. I will say only that it is written in the style of a well-known author and continues that author's beloved series of novels, but with a decided twist. Curtis has this other writer's style down cold, and his writing is remarkably concise and funny -- I laughed aloud many times while reading his first 17 pages, and he ended his fourth chapter with a bang-up cliffhanger. Curtis told me I may very well be the only person besides himself who ever reads this novel, which is a shame because it's so terrific; on the other hand, I feel incredibly lucky that out of all the people in the world, I'm the one he is allowing to see it. I hope he'll let me keep a copy when he's done.

Curtis had read my first 21 pages and had some positive things to say about my work. More important to me than the specifics of what he laid out was the fact that he read my book seriously and took his role as reader seriously. I know I'm not writing a great book -- I'm not trying to. But I took enormous pleasure in Curtis' treatment of my effort; last night, he made me feel like a writer.

Every one counts

I was a little late for work this morning because I was voting. Some group was taking an exit poll outside my polling place, and I decided to fill out one of their forms. I probably ought to be opposed to exit polls on principle (I don't know why, exactly -- they just seem like something that should bug the hell out of me), but it felt good letting others know how I voted. I hope I DO influence others, especially if means they'll just get out and vote. It was satisfying checking the "other" box when asked which party I voted for for governor. There was no way I was gonna vote for Arnold, and Phil Angelides seems like a weak opponent. Until last night I had figured Angelides would get my vote, simply because he's not Arnold; then Sean pointed out that Schwarzenegger is way ahead in the polls and there's no way Angelides can beat him, so why not "throw away" my vote on somebody worthwhile? Thus, I voted for Peter Camejo, the Green candidate, whom I'd voted for a few years ago. The guy gets no publicity, since the Green party doesn't have the money for TV ads and endless mailings and irritating phone calls, but he has a solid plan and seems like a decent fellow -- that's more than I can say for either of the major candidates.

I get tired of people not voting yet continuing to complain about what's wrong with this country/state/community. My feeling is, if you can't bother to participate in the electoral process and change what's going on, I don't have to listen to your griping -- you've removed yourself from the public arena and are nothing more than a spectator, meaning your opinion is valueless to me. People complain that their votes make no difference. Well, if everyone who really feels that way were to vote, all of those ballots -- millions of 'em! -- could make a HUGE difference in the future of this country.

I once read a great metaphor that has stuck with me: If you believe you cannot change the world because your good acts are just a drop in the bucket, commit those good acts anyway. The important thing is not only that you believe you are making the world a better place by what you do, but also that you believe the bucket is there: have faith that good acts can accumulate and ultimately cause change. That image gives me a lot of hope as an individual.

Thank you. I will now step off my soapbox and take us back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Book-of-the-week

I missed the Weegee exhibit at the Getty last year, and I'm still kicking myself for it. The review that the L.A. Times gave the show was not favorable; I seem to recall the reviewer criticizing the overly "sensational" aspects of Weegee's photographs. Well, that's exactly why I wanted to see them! This great new collection of little-known pictures ranges in subject matter from car accidents to crime scenes to burlesque queens; individual shots have such evocative titles as Girl who beat police matron and escaped from jail, Hit by cab - and dead, and Couple in voodoo trance.

Who?

This afternoon, when I got home from work, there was a very large box, strapped to a pallet, in our driveway. I didn't need to open it to find out what it was. In fact, I barely looked at it as I walked by. I went into the house and called Sean at work and told him, "Your Dr. Who pinball machine is here."

For many years, it has been a dream of Sean and Curtis to own their very own Dr. Who pinball machine. When all three of us lived in Indiana and the boys were going to Purdue, they loved to visit the pinball arcade at the Levee Laundry and play Dr. Who; I'd join them occasionally, although I preferred the Addams Family pinball machine. Anyway, they always swore that if their production company ever made enough money, they would buy a Dr. Who for themselves. So far, their production company has made very little money, but I guess a vintage Dr. Who pinball machine isn't that expensive. At least it will keep them out of the pool halls and bars.

Secrets

One of my early Sunday morning rituals is to check in with PostSecret. I've been doing it for about a year-and-a-half now, and I find it very stimulating to sit here alone in the quiet kitchen with my cup of coffee and read the week's new secrets. I sent in a secret a little over a year ago that never got posted and didn't make either of the PostSecret books. Ultimately I talked to the person that my secret was about and we resolved an issue that had been upsetting me, so in the end it doesn't matter that no one ever saw that postcard -- working up the courage to send it gave me the courage to talk about my secret, and my life is now a little bit better for it.

Because I want desperately to win NaNoWriMo this year, I know I need to devote as much time as possible to working on my novel every day. But Frank Warren, the guy who created PostSecret, is going to be doing a signing at my place of employment on Thursday evening and I've decided I need to attend and see what he has to say. There is no way for me to work the experience into my novel's storyline, but I'm hoping it will prove inspiring and help keep me going in my quest to reach the 50,000 word mark.

(Oh, hey. I forgot to tell you -- I posted a short excerpt here the other day. Be aware that the NaNo page doesn't seem to care for dashes or ellipses, two of my favorites, so please don't judge what looks like my lack of punctuation in several spots. And you should probably know that my main character is a modern-day witch; I don't want you to be confused by all the references to spellcasting.)

Nutty as a fruitcake

Now that Halloween is a whole four days in the past, I must turn my attention to Christmas. (Thanksgiving is a two-day affair, three tops, barely a blip on my holiday radar. I can handle Thanksgiving with my eyes closed and one arm tied behind my back.) Christmas, to me, is about three things: food, gifts, and decorations. And family, naturally. I guess that's four things, and of course I left the most important one out. But I remembered to list the second most important one first, and that's food.

My family doesn't have a lot of Christmas cooking traditions. Mom used to make a big turkey dinner every Christmas Eve until, as teenagers, we kids rebelled about eating nothing but turkey from Thanksgiving until the end of the year; after that, the menu changed, but Mom never settled on one meal. She would always make something nice, like prime rib or a pork roast, but nothing ever became "Christmas dinner." That uncertainty has stayed with all of us kids now that we're grown, and planning the holiday meal is part of the celebration every year. We always potluck it, with the host providing the entree and the guests bringing side dishes and dessert. Sean and I are hosting my family's get-together this year and I'm already starting to think about what to serve. We'll probably eat German on Christmas Eve with Sean's mom's family, and we usually go out to an Italian restaurant with his dad's family on the 26th, so I'll need to work around that. Right now I'm leaning towards grilling some steaks.

Although the holiday meal was up in the air, my family's baking traditions were firmly entrenched. Mom always baked pumpkin bread -- several batches, to last us from Thanksgiving to the New Year. (You can find her delicious recipe here.) She always made three kinds of cookies: chocolate chip, peanut butter, and what we just called "Christmas cookies." These last ones were thin, crisp cookies that seemed to be part of the butter cookie family; I don't know if Mom doubled the recipe or what, but at least a gross of cookies was produced each year, all of them Christmas cookie cutter-shaped and in need of decoration. We kids did the decorating with tinted frosting and colored sugar, and by the time we were halfway through the process we were grumpy and mixing up weird colors and slapping that frosting on any old way. Mom would keep the strange-looking cookies for us to eat and give most of the nice ones away as gifts. Those cookies would last for weeks in the cookie jar -- they didn't really taste that good, but they had amazing staying power. The other thing Mom made at least one batch of every year was fudge, and to this day fudge is the taste that reminds me most strongly of Christmas.

One thing Mom never made was fruitcake. She and my dad both liked fruitcake, and they instilled in me an appreciation for the good stuff (because, unbelievers, there truly is such a thing as good fruitcake), but it's kind of a hassle to make and no one but the three of us would be eating it anyway. Dad was a doctor, and sometimes a patient or one of his colleagues would give him a holiday gift basket with a mini fruitcake in it. (Those were usually kind of gross.) Sometimes my parents would buy a fruitcake from a bakery or a catalogue. (Those were usually much better.) When I went away to college my freshman year, Dad ordered a fruitcake for me that was delivered the week after Thanksgiving; I ate a little bit of it every day for two weeks until I got to go home for Christmas break -- nothing has ever made me so homesick as that fruitcake.

I have made two fruitcakes in my life. The first was when I was in college. I can't remember where I found the recipe, but I recall it saying the cake should be sliced very thin because then the candied fruit, when the slice was held up to the light, would look like stained glass. Why anybody would care about that now seems beyond me, but at the time that description was very appealing. I remember the cake had a ton of chopped dates in it; while I like dates baked into things, I really don't care for them by themselves, and I started to feel sort of nauseated while cutting them up. It was a decent fruitcake, but I didn't bother to save the recipe.

The other fruitcake I attempted to make turned into a big ol' mess, probably verging on a fiasco. Eight or nine years ago I decided to make the luscious-sounding black cake that Laurie Colwin describes in her book Home Cooking. (It's a Jamaican recipe, and the cake gets its color from burnt brown sugar.) I don't have a copy of the book in front of me, but I remember the directions as being vague, to say the least. For starters, after letting the chopped dried fruits and nuts soak in wine for a couple of weeks, I was instructed to mix them with the dry ingredients and form a batter. Well, the recipe made so much batter that it wouldn't fit in my largest mixing bowl and I had to shift operations to an enormous stockpot that I normally used for canning. Then I was told to pour the batter into a greased loaf pan. "A greased loaf pan"? How big a pan was she talking about? It looked like I had enough batter to fill four or five loaf pans. I ended up running out and buying a large disposable aluminum loaf pan that held about 2/3 of the dough. I baked and baked the thing, probably twice as long as the recipe recommended; it set nicely around the edges and began to brown appetizingly, but the center remained stubbornly liquid-ish. I was incredibly frustrated and began to cry and threw the fruitcake out, though not before eating some of the baked portion, which was lovely. As a more experienced cook, I now could probably figure out how to make the recipe work, but its memory is forever tainted for me and I don't think I'll be trying it again anytime soon.

But I have been thinking about fruitcake lately. Right now is the time of year for baking one, because its flavor will improve as it ages. (Soaking it in liquor also improves its flavor, unbelievers.) There's a recipe from Martha Stewart that I've been itching to try forever, and I think I'll make it sometime this week; it's supposedly the recipe that Martha herself uses every year. You can find the recipe on her website, but it's a little different from the way it originally appeared in her magazine and the picture there is quite unappealing. Here's the recipe I'm going to be following:

MR. & MRS. MAUS'S FRUITCAKE
(makes two 9-inch cakes or loaves)

1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans
2 tbsp allspice
2 cups sugar
12 large eggs
6 lbs candied fruits and fresh nuts, such as citron, apricots, walnuts, and pecans
1/2 cup molasses
1 cup apricot jam
1/3 cup brandy
Whole dried apricots
Pecan halves

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F. Brush pans with butter. Line with parchment paper; brush with butter, and dust with flour, tapping out excess. Set aside. In another bowl, sift together the flour and allspice; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl at least twice. Stir in the fruits, nuts, and molasses; blend well.

Add the flour mixture to the batter, 1 cup at a time, until well mixed.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pans. Set the pans in a shallow pan filled with 1 1/2 to 2 inches of hot water. Bake until set, and a cake tester inserted into the middle of each cake comes out clean, 3 to 3 1/2 hours. Transfer the pans to a wire rack to cool completely.

Remove the cakes from the pans; discard the parchment paper. Strain the apricot jam; place in a small saucepan. Add the brandy to the pan, and heat over low heat until the mixture is warm through and syrupy. Glaze the fruitcake with the mixture. Garnish with dried apricots and pecan halves; glaze again. Let the glaze harden before wrapping the fruitcake in parchment paper. Wrap in plastic or keep in an airtight container; store in a cool, dark, dry place for several weeks.

If you are a fellow fruitcake lover, you may enjoy this.

A mindless trip down memory lane

I was looking through some family photos this morning and decided to share a few with you.

That's Susan, John, our cousin Julie, me, and Mary. And Laddie, who was later deported after he bit a neighborhood kid in the face. I have, as usual, been distracted by something off-camera. We are all dressed up in our 70s finery because we are going to the circus. And none of that Cirque du Soleil crap that's all beautiful and magical and awe-inspiring -- no, we're going to the real circus with elephants and trained dogs and scary clowns. And later, on the drive home, Susan, who just loooves cotton candy and is prone to car sickness, will throw up all over my shoes.

Here my siblings and I are posing with our grandparents, who were visiting from Detroit. I loved that dress I was wearing; I wore it all the time. In fact, when I think about my current wardrobe, I realize I don't have a single item in it that I love as much as I loved that dress. Looking at those shoes, though -- whew. I'm guessing those weren't my favorite shoes.

My mother loved this picture of my brother and me. I think it looks decidedly unnatural: I'll bet someone asked us to pose this way. But if you look closely, you'll see that my right hand is curled into a loose fist, which better sums up my childhood relationship with my brother than this photo does.

More about me

Praise be, Trooperdog tagged me with this meme so I have content today!

1) How old do you wish you were? I don't mind being 40, but there are times I wish I were ten years younger yet in possession of the knowledge and experience I have now.
2) What do you do when a vending machine steals your money? Shake the machine violently and swear.
3) Do you have a tattoo? Or if you were to get a tattoo, where would it be? I have a tattoo of a spiderweb on the back of my neck. I swore I'd never get a tattoo, but I have learned never to say never. I'd have to think long and hard, though, before I'd get another.
4) Do you know your neighbors? Not really. I know Steve R., who lives behind us; I'm on "hi-bye" terms with Mary J. across the street and our nasty tree-chopping neighbors next door, as well as Criminal Steve, whom I haven't seen since he was hauled off to the slammer
5) What do you consider a vacation? Time off from work. I often prefer staying home and puttering around the house and yard to the stress of traveling.
6) Are you touchy feely? Very much.
7) Showers or baths? I take a shower every day, since we have such a tiny, useless bathtub, but I really love the occasional long soak.
8) Favorite place to go on weekends? On Saturdays I enjoy going out to lunch with Norman; we haven't done it in a while and I miss it. On Sundays it's always fun to go to a movie and then to Big Mama's for dinner.
9) Do you trust people easily? I do, perhaps to my detriment. I instinctively feel that most people are decent and trustworthy, although obviously that isn't so.
10) What are your phobias? I'm afraid of heights and of walking down stairs in the dark.
11) Do you keep a handwritten journal? No. I've tried to keep one, but my writing always peters out after a few entries.
12) Where would you rather be right now? In bed... sound asleep.
13) What makes you feel warm and fuzzy? Sean.
14) Heavy or light sleep? Light. I'd get no sleep at all if it weren't for my earplugs.
15) Favorite color? Yellow.
16) Name three things you have on you at all times? Wedding ring, engagement ring, spare tire.
17) What is your favorite part of the chicken? The thigh. Dark meat, baby!
18) What's your favorite city? Like the song says: "I love L.A." But Seattle is pretty wonderful.
19) I can't wait until: I finish my NaNoWriMo novel.
20) How tall are you barefoot? Five-foot-seven.
21) Have you ever smoked pot? I've never smoked it.
22) Do you own a gun? No, and I never will.
23) What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Coffee.
24) What time did you wake up today? 5:15, twenty minutes before my alarm was set to go off.
25) Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate. Specifically, dark, bittersweet chocolate.
26) People you would like to tag? I'd like to tag Norman, but I ain't holding my breath.

Somebody stop me

What kind of sick masochist am I? Not only have I plunged into NaNoWriMo (today's word count: 4029), but I have now decided to participate in NaBloPoMo as well. In the words of NaBloPoMo founder Eden at Fussy, "Some of us lack the imagination, stamina, and self-destructive impulses required to write a novel that quickly, but, by Grabthar's Hammer, we can update our blogs every day for a month!" Yeah, brilliant me. I need not only to concoct a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month, but also to update How's Annie? every single day. If you thought I was scraping the bottom for subject matter before, I can only warn you that pickings may get pretty slim around here in the next month. I'll try not to be reduced to reprinting my grocery lists or job to-do's.

On the bright side: 4029 words! That's the most I've written in a single day since I put my bachelor's thesis together. (The key to successful thesis writing, in my experience, is nine months of research and three very intensive days of writing.) Considering that yesterday I had only the vaguest notion of how my novel would start, I'm pretty pleased with my beginning. I am trying to ignore my inner critic and focus purely on word count, as I feel it will be healthy for my psyche, but I admit to going back to things I wrote earlier in the day and tinkering with them a bit. In a day or so I'll post a link to my author page at NaNoWriMo, where you'll be able to read an excerpt from my novel; I have a sex passage coming up and I thought it would be fun to upload something sort of salacious for my vast reading public.

In the meantime, if you have any ideas for blog content during the next thirty days, your suggestions would be most welcome. In fact, I'm begging you.