Archives for May 2009

Yesterday, Lala and I made ourselves hysterical with laughter. I was literally out of my damn mind, tears rolling down my face. Funniest thing I've heard in years. It all started with the Best Joke You Can Play On A Writer.

Lala: I could sneak in here and change all the names of your characters! Find and replace! Suddenly your main character is named Evelyn! And you don't know why!

Rachael: [It takes me a minute to get on board.] I hope you saved my file as something else first.

Lala: Of course. And then, I could add adverbs! Lots of them!

Rachael: Silkily. Creepily. Scurrilously!

Lala: I could find and replace every "He said" with….

Rachael: "He whispered!"

Lala: And every "She said" could be "She shrieked!"

[We are by this point almost on the floor, slayed by our own wit.]

Rachael: "She shrieked, she shrieked!"  HAHAHAHAHA!

Lala: And then, oh my God…. Then, I could find and replace "He nodded" to….

Rachael: "He took off all his clothes!"

Lala (choking): I'm so sad I missed April Fool's!!!!

Rachael: What if I sent that version to my agent? Pay it forward! Then the next thing I send her would be so much better in comparison! Let's do it!

There you go. Now you know what to get the special writer in your life for their next birthday! Help them with their manuscript! They'll thank you in the long run. For sure.

Hullo, kids.

Just a drive-by post — I've been busy with editing Book Two along with working approximately eleventy-million hours at the J.O.B. I'm trying to get the book into good enough shape to send to my Amazing Agent, Susanna Einstein, by the beginning of June. I'm doing the hard-copy edits now, and then I'll input them into the computer next week (that takes SO long, and it's the most tedious part of writing, I think).

The best part is now. The book is written, and I'm playing around inside it, tinkering, moving things, seeing if they fit better over here or over there.

My favorite part of moving is after the furniture has been dumped inside the house. All the corners are clean, and you can put the couch here and see what you think about it. You can hang a picture there and then move it three times until you love it.

That's the stage I'm in right now. It won't last long, so I'm enjoying every minute of it. There will be many such minutes today — I'm an editing fool today.

At least I have help.

Off to the coffee shop now. Not even bringing the computer. I will get SO much done this way.

(I know, two blogs in one day. I can't help myself. Call me boingboing.)

We just made spontaneous pizza with stuff that we found in the kitchen, and it was the BEST. I'm chronicling it here so that when I ask myself how we did that, I'll be able to search and find it.

First, I took a grapefruit-sized hunk of that bread dough I had hanging out in the fridge. I put cornstarch* on our griddle and laid it out, smoothing it into pizza shape. Then Lala and I took the dogs for a long ramble during which Clara gamboled and Harriet tumbled. Miss Idaho just bounced.

Then we came home, and the dough looked riz enough, so I chopped up three cloves of garlic, and dumped them in a bowl with some olive oil, just a splash of balsamic vinegar, some salt and pepper, and some sun-dried tomatoes. I set the oven to broil, and put the griddle on a medium flame on the stovetop.

Then I dumped the garlic/oil/tomato mixture on top and moved it around with my hands. I tore big pieces of fresh mozzarella and scattered them all over, then topped it with chopped fresh basil out of the garden and pine nuts.

I cooked that until the bottom was just making it to too-brown, and then popped it in the oven under the broiler for about three minutes. The top started to char, so I turned off the broiler and let it sit in the oven for a couple more minutes — I wanted the crust to be done.

Lala chopped up some arugula from the garden and we sprinkled that on top, and IT WAS SO FLIPPING GOOD. Garlicky and tangy and crisp and crunchy but soft, too…. I want more now.

Inspired by this. You should make it right now, with whatever you have in the house. Unless what you have is tequila and and baking soda, in which case you should probably go shopping anyway.

*I meant to use cornmeal, but grabbed the wrong box, and I must say it worked out just right! Odd.

Brenda Novak is doing her annual auction to benefit diabetes research. Last year she raised a quarter of a million dollars; this year she hopes to hit $300,000.

Romancing the Yarn, where I am lucky enough to blog sometimes, donated a lovely basket full of goodies, including a pair of handknit socks from ME (they would fit a ladies size 7-10 foot).

BASKET HERE.

There are also a TON of things to bid on. Check it out HERE.

It's a great cause, kids. Let me know if you win it! 

I am so excited about two things that I HAVE to share them. HAVE to. You have GOT to know.

1. Pandora.com

Are you listening yet? I've waxed poetic about it before, but I'll do it again. It's internet radio that you create by entering a favorite artist or song. The music genome project (what drives your iTunes Genius) then plays all sorts of songs that share similar characteristics with what you entered, and you hear songs that you practically automatically love. (Oh, God. Except for what just happened right now on one of my stations. Warning: If you make a station based on Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me to the End of Love", you might get a death metal song. Huh. Every once in a while you get a dud, and you just thumb it down, and it doesn't happen again.)

It's free. They don't spam. Commercials are almost nonexistent (although they have little 10 second bits every once in a while that I don't seem to notice).

AND THE BEST PART?  They came out with a Blackberry app this week. That means when I get in my car after work, I open that app on my phone. I plug my cassette-tape adapter (HIGH TECH, YO!) into my phone and listen blissfully to music that agrees with whatever mood I find myself in. (And then I answer the phone when my sister calls and get completely freaked out to find her voice coming out on my car stereo, booming around me. But that's another story.)

If you want to sample it, go to my favorite station right now, FOUND HERE. I warn you, when I play it, Lala rolls her eyes and says "Your music is making me ovulate," so of course, I call it Ovulation Station. But driving home last night, it played Dar Williams's "Iowa" and Iron and Wine's "Naked as We Came," so you can already tell it's perfect. But you can make your perfect station, too. Go sign up. Come on.

I'm not associated with Pandora, except for a reader who works there (Hi, Lucia!). LOVE PANDORA.

2. BREAD.

Bread, dude.

Okay, I haven't really been eating bread lately. Good for me. Less headaches. Less weight. Yadda yadda. But I had a craving the other day and I saw the most amazing article in the New York Times. You know a few years ago, the no-knead bread recipe that took like a whole night of rising but no kneading?

The response to Mr. Bittman’s article was so fervid you would have thought he’d revealed
a foolproof way to pick winning lottery numbers. It was a sign of how
desperately people want to bake at home, and how painfully aware they
are of their limitations.

The method he wrote about, though,
looks like molecular gastronomy next to the one developed by Jeff
Hertzberg, a physician from Minneapolis. His technique is more or less
as streamlined as this: Mix flour, salt, yeast and water. Let it sit a
bit, refrigerate it, take some out and let it rise, then bake it.

The crusty, full-flavored loaf that results may be the world’s easiest yeast bread.

Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

Seriously. I made bread yesterday, while I was dying from a migraine. And it took less than five minutes of actual work (with rising, from ingredients to table in less than 3.5 hours).

Basically, you get out some flour, some yeast, some salt. Then you blow on the ingredients (okay, smoosh them around in a bowl with some water), and then POOF, you have bread. Good bread. Perfect bread. I'll eventually buy the book for all the different variations, but for now, we're going to subsist on the free recipe that makes like four loaves (over two weeks! Refrigerated dough).

Delightful article HERE.

Recipe HERE.

Not affiliated with those folks, either. But wouldn't I like to be? Hello, BREAD! Hot, buttery, bread. Yum. Luckily, I have more dough waiting to be cooked in the fridge.