Welcome Gentle Readers

This blog tends to wander from its main purpose -- updates on my fiction. I do have updates and excerpts of my work. But I also write about my obsessions -- food, friends and pop culture and my weird life in Los Angeles. Enjoy!

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Lent and Craig, Souffles and Updates


Craig turned a hose on JJ Abrams  recently. Apparently, the man walked across Craig's yard en route to a writer who lives in the same building. Craig gave him a hard stare in response to the startled sound Abrams made. It could be that Craig has grown tired of finding either A-listers or large Macaw parrots in his yard. We never did find out why Jack Nicholson was in there. Craig had been in too much of a hurry to hose him at the time. He always regretted that. When I asked why he hosed Abrams, Craig said it was in part for wasting Karl Urban in Star Trek but mostly for Super 8. Strangely, that wasn't why he called on Wednesday. He was making sure I was properly ashed for the holy day. Despite his carefully constructed persona of a remorseless heathen, Craig is fairly religious. He was not very impressed with my pledge for Lent. I go meatless on Fridays and sometimes more days a week. I responded that he has no idea how much I like bacon. This is a hardship. I almost blew the pledge on Ash Wednesday because I was on automatic pilot making breakfast. I managed not to blow it. And since it was also National Margarita Day (who decides these things?), a good time was had by all.

Meatless Dilemmas

I do a lot of prep for my meatless days during Lent. I soak and cook all different kinds of beans. I make mushroom and vegetable stocks for soups. I've become really picky about soups. I really prefer a homemade stock. It's the snacks that make meat free days difficult. Sandwiches are just too easy. Especially the Jambon et fromage on a baguette (ham and cheese). I can make a tray of mini sandwiches That will tide Jon and I over until dinner. I have to think to remember to replace the filling with fig jam and soft cheese. I try hard to make dishes that Jon and I both would eat. And he doesn't eat a particular dish, I try to find ways of making it so that it could be frozen for later. I really enjoy savory souffles, but my hubs does not. Most recipes call for servings of four or more. I had a recipe for chocolate souffles that c45+0an be frozen and baked later, but I had had no luck finding a cheese souffle recipe that could be done ,the same way. Then, one day I was up at 4am watching Sara's Secrets on the Cooking Channel. She made a twice baked goat cheese souffle. I figured that if it could be baked twice, maybe it could be frozen in between. I even wrote Ms. Moulton to ask her. She told me to try and let her know how it worked. It worked beautifully! And she praised me for the discovery, to boot! Jon is convinced that I will write a cookbook someday. He's also certain that I will be making him bento box lunches at some point. Both are probably true.

Juggling Genres

So far, I'm successfully switching my brain back and fourth between scripts and manga and business proposals. I even have a schedule for when I work on what to keep things moving forward in some fashion and have time for cooking and other shiny objects that get my attention like Mannix turning up on Murder She Wrote. That's been distracting me for at least twenty minutes. At any rate, I find I need significant breaks between projects to shift fully from one into the other. My brain gets really tired when I try to take on too much too quickly. On fun benefit about editing manga that I didn't expect was the impact on my learning Japanese. My team was trying to figure out what a sound effect was. It was written in thin, tiny characters. I wrote them out to figure out what it was. Then, I realized it was the name of the leading man. Jon read it and confirmed. “When did you start writing in Japanese,” he asked. I replied, “Just now!” I had been practicing the characters of one form of writing, but had yet to really write words. It's very exciting.

Updates

There still isn't anything that I can discuss freely. As far as I know, it should be only a few more weeks of secrecy.

Stay tuned.




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