Writin' Rations™ — Almond Torte

Okay, so, like, you need to make a cake or something, and you need to do it in a hurry, and it needs to be very, very simple, because you have a deadline for that story or novel draft or Ph.D. proposal. Writin' Rations™ to the rescue! The main time commitment is the baking and cooling, but you can go do other things while they're happening.

Emergency Almond Torte
1. Melt a lump of butter approximately the size of a pack of playing cards, and set aside to cool a little. While this is happening, preheat the oven to about 140 degrees C (280 degrees or so F, maybe 300).

2. Whisk together four eggs, one extravagantly heaped cup of sugar, a half teaspoon of salt, and a generous splash each of vanilla extract/essence, almond extract, and whatever nut-flavored liqueur you have on hand (if any). Keep whisking until it's all pale yellow and frothy and you are bored. This should take about 10 minutes, maybe a little longer if your attention span is better than mine.

3. Once the butter is cool enough to neither cook the eggs on contact nor burn your hand, use a little bit of it to grease a round cake pan, and whisk the rest of it into the egg mixture. If you don't mind a little gluten, flour the cake pan as well.

4. Dump between 1.5 and 2 cups almond meal into the bowl of batter (2 is better than 1.5, but sometimes you're getting toward the bottom of the bag and so you make do), and mix until there are no lumps. This should not take very much effort.

5. Pour into the cake pan (of COURSE), and bake until it's very, very golden brown and firm. This may take as long as 45 minutes, but you can use this time to finish your story or clean up the kitchen or something equally arduous yet necessary.

6. Let cool for at least a half hour, then slice and eat. Om nom nom.

UPDATE, March 5, 2017

Because tonight I needed to make a version with no dairy in it, I used coconut oil in place of the butter, with two changes: (1) I added just a little more salt, to make up for the salt that would have been in the butter that I was no longer using; and (2) instead of melting the coconut oil, I used the mixer first to get all the lumps out (a whisk might also work, if the day is warm enough – or I supposed you could melt it after all), then to incorporate the sugar and eggs, beating the three ingredients on high for several minutes. (I also, because I could, stirred slightly rehydrated, home-dried strawberries into the batter just before baking; home-dried are better because the store ones are oddly textured and full of extra sugar and don't taste nearly enough like actual strawberries to allay my suspicions.)

Albatross, Improv, and more Cafe Poet

Work is proceeding apace on the Wollongong season of The Death of Albatross, and all this time spent in theatres has gotten me thinking a lot about the "offer". My actor friends and family (and I'm surrounded by them, which is a wild way to live, let me tell you) have explained to me that good improvisation depends crucially on one maxim: Never refuse an offer. For those of you without actor family and friends, I will demonstrate:

Person X: Got a match?

Person Y has two choices here.

Person Y: No.

OR

Person Y: Actually, what I have is my pet dragon, which I bring out whenever I need a bit of portable combustion. However, you have to be careful because what she eats to produce flame is —

Person X: AAAARGH! HUMAN FLESH!!!! GET IT OFF ME, GET IT OFF ME!

See how it works? The story only keeps going when each person keeps accepting the offer.

That's a really interesting approach to a lot of things. My own writing, for example. If I think in terms of accepting the offer that is set up by what the characters have just done or said, I start being a lot more open to unusual, fun, bizarre, touching, and quite suddenly meaningful happenings. Since we're still at the start of the year, I'm going to risk loading myself up with yet another good intention: I'm going to be spending time as I write accepting my characters' offers instead of shutting them down with what's "supposed" to happen.


The slightly improved Poet-Tree — now the tree doesn't wobble, and it looks more foresty.

In other news, my tenure as Cafe Poet at Yours and Owls is starting off swimmingly. Writer buddies have started stopping by, the Poet-Tree continues to be a success, and I'm even making progress on the project I'm working on (the text for a sort of oratorio that I'm hoping will get performed in 2013; it counts as poetry because it's, like, poetic.) If you're in Wollongong, keep an eye on my Facebook writer page for the times I'll be there, and come along! (Heck, keep an eye on my writer page even if you're not in Wollongong — it's where I post my writerly doings, if you're interested in knowing when I've got a piece being published or performed somewhere.)

Meanwhile — got a match?

Cafe Poet Day One!

I'm sitting in the almost-too-cool-to-be-borne Yours and Owls here in Wollongong, in my first stint as Cafe Poet. I have my free pot of tea, I have opened the file to a new writing project, and people have already begun raiding the Poet-Tree (see below) — clearly, things have begun well.


The Poet-Tree (idea courtesy of poet Bronwyn Lovell, bronwynlovell.com)

The Poet-Tree, brainchild of fellow Cafe Poet Bronwyn Lovell, is a tree with leaves that are snatches of poetry. I've grabbed the words of some of my favorite poets, and sprinkled in a leaf or two of my own, because if you want to run with the big dogs, you have to hang with the big dogs. It didn't take long before pretty much everyone in the cafe descended on the tree to take a leaf for themselves (which I quickly replenished from my stock, which I had brought along out of a gratifyingly useful sense of optimism).

If you'd like to build a Poet-Tree for yourself, here's how I did it.

Materials
- A round disk of masonite or wood, about 10" (25cm) across
- A dowel about 1/2" (1cm) diameter, about 18" (45cm) long
- 15 to 18 battery clips/alligator clips (or so)
- The same number of zip ties, of a width that comes close to fitting into the ends of the battery clips
- Some wire; green looks nice
- Some electrical tape (I used green, because it was the least jarring color I had, but brown would probably be a lot better)
- Some green paper (I used green sparkly paper)
- A skein of thick brown yarn (you won't use anywhere near the whole thing, but it's hard to buy just a few meters/yards of yarn); I found some chenille yarn that was absolutely perfect on sale in a craft store for $1 a skein
- Glue
- Paper
- Two small nails with wide, flat heads on them

Tools
- Hammer
- Pliers
- Wire cutters

1. Hammer the disk onto the end of the dowel. Mine is still a little wobbly, so I'm probably going to have to find some way to steady it (maybe glue stones to the base next to the dowel, which will have the added advantage of making it look more foresty and everything).


2. Slide the ends of the ties into the sockets on the clips and crimp very firmly (you may need to flatten the sockets just a little bit to fit the ends of the zip ties in; I did).


3. Use the tape to fasten the other end of the zip ties to the dowel.


4. Make some leaves out of the paper and glue them to pieces of the wire that are about the same length as the zip ties; I used leaf "sandwiches" from which protruded the wires. Attach them to the dowel after the same manner.


5. Hammer the other nail partway into the top of the dowel.


6. Drape yarn strings down along the dowel from their center, looping them around the nail in the top. As you drape each one, glue it in place so it looks like bark. You'll have to work around the zip ties and leaf wires, but that makes them look like they're growing out of the "tree", so that's all right.


7. Write up a bunch of poetry snippets on pieces of paper; I printed mine out because (a) my handwriting is abysmal and (b) you can fit more computer-printed poetry on a leaf-sized slip than you can if you're writing by hand.


8. Clip the snippets onto the clips, and make sure you have some to replenish the tree with!

As I mentioned, I'll probably be tweaking the tree to make it look more foresty and sylvan, and to steady the wobbly dowel. But overall I'm very pleased with how it turned out, and how people gathered round to take a piece of poetry. More poetry in people's lives! My mission has begun well indeed!