Dukkah -- so simple to make, so gooooood to eat

I've become a relatively recent convert to dukkah: a mixture of ground-up, toasted nuts, spices, and seeds. You use it as a dip of sorts -- dip a bite-sized piece of GOOD bread into some olive oil, dab it into the dukkah, and eat. Terrific!

Take about a half-teaspoon of each of these: whole cumin seed and whole coriander seed. Add a teaspoon each of black sesame seed and white sesame seed. Add a quarter-teaspoon of cardamom seed. Add a very small pinch of hot pepper flakes (like they put on the table in pizzerias (at least the ones in New Jersey)). Toast them all together in a hot, DRY frying pan until they JUST, JUST start to give off the tiniest bit of smoke. Immediately tip them onto a plate to cool.

Next, keeping the burner and the pan hot, dump in about a cup of hazelnuts. Toast them for a few minutes, jiggling the pan often so that more surfaces come in contact with the heat. Once they've browned a bit, chuck them in a food processor or blender or hand-cranked chopper (that's what I've got, and I'd never be without it).

While the pan is still hot (although you might be able to get away with turning the burner off entirely at this point), chuck in about a quarter cup of shredded UNSWEETENED coconut (for those Australians reading this, most of the shredded coconut sold in America has sugar added to it. Yes, yes, I know. But we're talking the land of doughnuts for breakfast here). The coconut will turn brown very, very quickly. As soon as it does, chuck it in the chopping device with the hazelnuts. (You won't need either the burner or the pan again for this dish.)

Chop up the nuts and the coconut until they're quite finely chopped -- almost at the powder stage. Grind the spices very finely; I've got an enormous stone mortar and accompanying pestle, one of my most treasured possessions, and it works pretty well. I've also got a battery-operated pepper mill that is almost entirely useless for spices, including pepper. But it makes a cool sound and a light comes on when you push the button. So that's okay. Add a few grinds of black pepper, a quarter teaspoon or so of paprika, and a very modest pinch of salt. Use the chopping device to mix it all together (and smallify any hazelnut chunks that had escaped your zeal earlier).

Put it in a bowl. Put some olive oil in another bowl. Cut the bread into small-enough chunks that no-one is tempted to put a chewed-on piece of bread back into the oil and the dukkah (ew ew ew, so rude). Eat.

The dukkah keeps quite well in a sealed container in the fridge, and you can use it for other stuff. I found that dumping a quarter-cup or so in with rice when it's cooking makes the rice mighty tasty, just as an example. It would probably be really good in salads, too, or mixed through pasta (with, of course, some olive oil).

Chapter 1: The Pit and the Pendulum

"Hell's bells," I thought, as I dangled over the lava pit. It was only a small pit, but I could still feel the heat as though I were peering into the oven to figure out whether the turkey was done. My wrists were aching, my skin was starting to sting from the heat, but what tormented me most was my itching nose. And, of course, the sight of Doctor Hypatia Garoux cackling and dancing on the edge of the pit. I was hoping she'd do a Gollum and plummet into the fiery depths, but Lord of the Rings is fiction. Not just fiction, fantasy. Things don't happen like that in real life.

Maybe if I swung back and forth, I could gain enough momentum to reach the edge and use my feet to scrabble up and out. But as soon as Pace noticed what I was doing, she grabbed her slingshot -- which had been her weapon of choice since we'd both arrived at St. Basilissa's (she's the patron saint of chilblains. No, really, you can look it up) -- and fired a rock at my butt. She's a pretty good shot.

"The next one knocks you in the head," she said as the waves of pain traveled across my back and down my legs. "Hold still and roast."

"Jeez, Pace, what did I ever do to you?"

But I knew. Oh, yes. There was a paper in the Journal of Applied Fluvial Geomorphology with my name on it. And the research was hers.

"You were never going to publish!" I grunted through the pain and the heat. "You kept wanting to run the models one...more...time! The world doesn't have time for that! They needed to listen, they needed to know!"

Pace went still. "No! It's too early. We know the sediment is alive, but we don't know its intentions."

"INTENTIONS!" I screamed. "It's SEDIMENT! It hasn't got any intentions except to be borne in blissful unconcern down the river and silt up the delta. The sediment isn't the problem!"

Pace knew what I meant. Her academic advisor, whom we'd both once considered a colleague, even a friend, had disappeared two years ago, just after Pace had successfully defended her dissertation. Not long after that, the sediment load in the Purple River had increased fivefold. Pace had this cockamamie idea that the sediment had consciously decided to leap into the river to seek its fortune. Me, I had a different theory: Dr. Kortnozzle was in the hills at the headwaters, stirring up trouble as well as sediment.

I knew that if I could draw enough attention to the increase in sediment, someone -- someone with more skills and firepower than I had -- would catch the hint and go after Kortnozzle. As far as I could tell, though, the article had sunk (as it were) without a ripple.

Meanwhile, Pace had gone mad with rage that I'd gazumped her research and published first. I couldn't blame her, but that didn't mean that being barbecued over a lava pit wasn't a bit of a disproportionate penance. "Pace, please! I can publish a retraction!"

She just rocked back and forth on her heels, watching me spin slowly over the pit, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. I wondered whether, if she gave me a shove, I would start to demonstrate the earth's spin as I swung. Maybe Pace should have set little pins up for me to knock down as the earth turned beneath me. I would probably be toast -- literally and figuratively -- before I'd dangled long enough to be a human Foucault's Pendulum, though.

"Pace, listen. Let me go, and I'll use my fellowship money to fund the field research you and Jasper need to finalize your data. You can go and have lunch with the sediment, whatever you want. And I'll run all the sims for you with my server time. I swear it."

Pace gave me a suspicious look. "You know if you betray me a second time, I won't bother with the fun and games. I'll kill you immediately."

"I know. Reel me in, and you'll see I mean what I say."

Slowly, Pace reached down and picked up a rope with a vicious-looking hook on the end. She whirled it around her head and flung it out, jerking back on it at precisely the right moment to hook the rope from which I hung. She pulled me over to the side of the pit, not very gently: I raised my knees just in time to avoid having my face slammed into the rock. She stepped backwards, dragging me up to the lip, and I wriggled until I got my legs and body onto the ledge. Pace cut the cords on my wrists, and I scratched my nose frantically.

"Right," said Pace as I got clumsily to my feet. "As soon as we get back outside, I'll phone Jasper to meet us. We'll bring you by the admin office to do the paperwork for the funds transfer, then we're off to the hills. You know I'm insane and unpredictable. So you won't try anything. Will you?"

"Of course not." Not until I saw my chance, that is.

To be continued....

What Houston witnessed on the train today

Today, as Houston was taking the train home, the cops were going through checking tickets. One reprobate did not, in fact, have a ticket. He showed his ID, and murmured something vague about having to get out at the next stop. "Sure, mate," said one of the cops.

As the train slowed and the guy turned to open the door, the cop said casually, "Hey, mate, you dropped your little drug packet."

The guy gave a horrible start and looked wildly around the floor of the carriage. "What?"

A pause.

Then the other cop said, "Right, mate, you and I are getting out here."

As they stepped out onto the platform, the first cop said, "Jeez, I only wanted to embarrass him."

Town Criers

A few years ago, I was quite surprised (although, given the things some of my friends and I are interested in, perhaps I shouldn't have been) to find that being a town crier is a major pastime for some people. Like any passion, it has its dabblers, its mockers, and its fanatic adherents. No doubt it also has its factions, hurt feelings, martyrs, and posturing -- again, like any passion.

But there are also clearly people who have have finally found, in the town-crier community, someplace to belong. Their quirks and nerdiness are actually assets, valued and admired by other town criers. There is also the sense of connection with the past, which is an amazingly powerful motivator. And, of course, there are always those looking for a novel way to say "Look at me!"

You can check out this link for a glimpse into the world of the town crier. (I sense a story coming on -- I need to finish one or two of the major projects I've got, so that I can have the luxury of writing stories when they start pressing their noses against the glass.)

Goal-setting, journey of a thousand miles, yeah, yeah.

As an exercise (set by my current martial-arts school), I've been trying to set out my major goals and the steps I'll take to get there. I'm actually a setter-out of written goals from way back, and I'm always shocked by the time the end of each year arrives at how my life has veered from what I thought at the beginning was its path. Example: a few years ago I was actively pursuing an actual, grown-up career in emergency management. A lot of my goals had to do with gaining the expertise and running the projects I needed for that. These days I'm pretty well convinced that emergency management is not where I want to be: instead, I'm pointing my energy toward writing and making writing-related things happen.

It's an exercise in self-doubt, more than anything: I spent all that effort on emergency management, and found out it wasn't the right thing for me. Will I find out the same thing with writing? Or -- WORSE -- have it found out for me by critics either more or less kindly? I guess I can only find out over time.

When I'm hiking, I make it a point every once in a while to turn around and look at how the trail looks from the other direction -- because it will make it easier to backtrack in case I get lost, frankly. But it's also useful for seeing how far I've come. When I look back in a month, or in a year, what will the trail behind me look like? How far will I have come, and in what direction?

I've invented a very tasty dish.

Allow one largeish potato per person, and about that same amount (by mass, not number of tuber items) of sweet potato.

Slice the white potatoes up in about half-inch (1cm) cubes and boil them until they're somewhat softer than they were at the start. Not too soft, or they'll be too mushy. (I don't bother peeling the white potatoes; it doesn't really matter either way.)

Peel the sweet potatoes (yes, this does matter) and cut them into half-inch (1cm) cubes.

Take a hunk of pepperoni (about a six-inch/12cm chunk of a one-inch/2cm-diameter pepperoni) and cut it into bits. I make them about a quarter-inch/4-5mm on a side.

Put everything in a bowl. Toss with a moderate drizzle of olive oil (just enough to coat things a bit), a very moderate amount of salt (the pepperoni will supply a fair bit on its own), and a very generous drizzle of honey. Mix it all up well, but don't be too vigorous or you'll smush the potatoes.

Roast in a hot oven (I used about 160C, and I don't have the energy to figure that out in F, but all my friends are geeks and know how to do that themselves) until the sweet potatoes are soft and things are starting to brown. (This could take anywhere from a half hour to an hour; sorry I can't be more precise.) I find that if I make sure a fair few pepperoni chunks are on top of the mixture, the lovely smokey flavor penetrates more through the spuds.

Heavens, it's tasty!

The kids read through Act I today.

The reading of Act I actually went better than I had feared. The kids laughed at the jokes, enjoyed the conflict scenes, and had already decided amongst themselves who they thought should be playing each role. They're enthusiastic about doing a world premier to begin with, and the fact that I'm specifically designing the play to be fun for them is a bonus. (Apparently the most recent few works they've been performing have been somewhat angst-y and avant-gardey. One of them said, "My father will be so glad we're putting on a normal play.") Even the director/producer is happy with it.

Whew!

Now: to write Act II....

The Ur-Text for British Humo(u)r

A year or two ago, I finally got around to reading Three Men in a Boat, and discovered that it is the spring from which all British humor flows. You can download it free from Project Gutenberg, or get it from Amazon, or whatever works for you.

The opening paragraphs:
There were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we were - bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.

We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that HE had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what HE was doing. With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.

In other news, I have the first reading of Act I of the whodunit play with the actors tomorrow. The thought of this makes me nervous, sullen, and defensive. And they haven't even seen it yet -- just think what I'll be like tomorrow! (Pity my poor husband and child.) And I think my liver may be acting up....

My current projects

I'm working on a few rather big writing projects, all of which have me intimidated to a greater or lesser degree:

1. I've written slightly more than half of an adventure novel (planned length about 90,000 words as far as I know at this point). This has been the typical back-burner project for well over a decade. The first few chapters have been written and rewritten (which is sort of like chewing and rechewing your food, only not as nice), and the subsequent chapters get increasingly haphazard and rough.

2. I've got the first act written of a typical (no, I'll be kind and call it "classic") whodunit stage play, written with a particular troupe of young (teenage) actors in mind. I'm aiming for about an hour of stage time, which is significantly less than "full length", but it's the first play I've written since the 10-minute play I got performed when I was 13. (Having already had one's first play performed tends to put rather a heavy burden on one regarding the second play, even if it is over three decades later....) Houston and Margaret, both of whom are actors, obliged me with a reading of the first act last night in our living room, and it's not as embarrassingly leaden as I had feared. It's pretty much guaranteed a performance, as I'm writing it to order for the kids, as well as workshopping it with them; I'll post its progress (and, hopefully, eventual success) on this blog.

3. I'm collaborating with Houston on a major work called Earth and Space. I provide the poems, he sets them for mezzo soprano, chorus, various instruments that I can't recall off the top of my head, and electronics. I don't really consider myself a poet, except I keep writing poems, so what's the story there?

4. And, of course, because I have nothing else to occupy me, I've started this blog. Ta-dah!

Where the blog name comes from

As You Like It, Act II Sc. 7

JAQUES
O worthy fool! One that hath been a courtier,
And says, if ladies be but young and fair,
They have the gift to know it: and in his brain,
Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit
After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd
With observation, the which he vents
In mangled forms. O that I were a fool!
I am ambitious for a motley coat.

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So am I, Jaques. I'd love to have strange places in my brain crammed with observation, and to vent it in mangled forms. What writer is any different?