Sharibet's ramblings

Whew! Father's Day dinner was a success, if I may say so myself. My Dad certainly seemed to enjoy it!

Le Menu:

• assorted cheeses and crackers, served with an Alsatian Pinot Blanc
   
• homemade French onion soup topped with sourdough rounds and Emmenthaler cheese
   
• bok choy, Chinese broccoli, and snow peas braised in a white wine and chicken stock reduction, flavored with garlic, soy, and sesame oil
   
• broiled filet mignon topped with sauteed Crimini mushrooms in a garlic-and-wine sauce and served with an Australian Shiraz
   
• freshly-baked sourdough bread and butter
   
• homemade hazelnut gelato
   

Yesterday's dinner out for Nick's birthday was fabulous...and a lot of fun. There were six of us--Nick and Pirri (my Japan travel buddies); Natascha and Allen (she's German, he's Scottish, and they're both as funny as hell, especially when they're riffing on something with those adorable accents of theirs); another former Documentum co-worker, Wilson; and me.

Dinner was kaiseki (a super-fancy style of Japanese cuisine, emphasizing seasonal food, served small-plates style with attention to presentation and arrangement), and served in 8 courses, each course consisting of 3-4 small plates each. We ate for nearly three hours. It was all delicious, and included probably the best sashimi I've ever had, and that's taking into account the sushi/sashimi dinner in Kyoto last autumn.

Dinner was also really bloody expensive. I can really only afford to do this once a year, but damn, it was good, especially in such good company.

Menu here: http://www.kaygetsu.com/kaisekinow.pdf

Have accomplished absolutely nothing on The Wolf Prince this week, but got tons of other stuff done, mostly relating to health and my upcoming trip to Europe.

Yep, booked my flight this week.

I'll be gone pretty much all of September--am flying into Munich, spending a couple of days visiting with my aunt & uncle in Stuttgart, then leaving on a one-week bus tour of Provence, via Lyons. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the places that Marian and I researched for the later volumes of the House of the Rose series, and also the lovely Roman and medieval buildings. We'll be based in a gorgeous Provencal farmhouse-cum-B&B, and doing our sightseeing from that base. Among the highlights: walking tours of Avignon, Orange, Arles, Nimes, Aix, Marseilles, and Tarascon.

When I return to Germany from Provence on the 13th, I'll be meeting up with a friend from my Documentum days, and we'll spend the remaining 2 weeks of September playing tourist in Germany.

We're still whittling down our wish list of places to see, trying to fit them into what's possible and comfortable in the time we have.

So many cool things to see and do in Germany...Berlin and its terrific Pergamon and Egyptian museums is high on the list, as is Dresden. I'd also like to hit one of the walled medieval UNESCO World Heritage cities...Rothenburg-ob-der-Taube, Regensburg, or Wuerzburg, as well as the old Roman city of Trier and the Moselle River valley, and the gorgeous medieval Hanseatic city of Luebeck (where I spent many happy childhood summers with my grandmother, and where I also still have family, so it's kind of a must-do, at least for me).

This current chapter is being very difficult to write, since I've realized that large parts of my outline for the second half of the book now make little or no sense, but it's nice to have uninterrupted time to just chip away at a scene.
( in which the glamorous life of the working writer is revealed )

I know I've hit the halfway point in The Wolf Prince because the usual halfway-point crisis happened: I got stuck in the middle of a scene (as in, I went absolutely blank, and nothing but nothing was coming to me about what happens next).
( negotiating with the voices in my head )

This week's ice cream experiment was Mint Chocolate Chip, which is my favorite flavor.

I used this wonderful recipe!

The resulting ice cream is a lovely pale green color, and the mint flavor is amazing, both strong and subtle at the same time. Because I'm made this batch for a diabetic friend of mine, I substituted Splenda for the sugar, and it tastes great.

I'm definitely making this one again! I think I'm going to have to plant more peppermint, though--my two potted mint plants were thoroughly denuded for three cups of packed leaves required in this recipe.

I love audiobooks, and I listen to a lot of them while I'm driving or exercising. It's a wonderful way to keep up with my favorite authors without taking too much time away from my own writing. I just finished listening to a wonderful reading of Lois McMaster Bujold's Paladin of Souls, (I cried through the last third of the book, it was incredibly poignant and bittersweet) and I'm currently listening to Fool Moon, the second volume of Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series. 

Which leads me to the reason for collaborating with my good friend Louise Calkins to create podcasts of some of my books. Last weekend, we recorded an audio excerpt of the first chapter of Twist of Honor, with more excerpts planned in future months.

I have to say, it was a real thrill to hear Louise bring the story to life with her wonderful reading! You'll hear my voice, too, doing the introduction and the afterword, but really, Louise is the star of the show here.

If you're interested, please download the podcast when you have a moment. It can be found here:

http://www.archive.org/details/TwistOfHonor-ChapterOne

File Size: 28 MB  
Length: approximately 30 minutes

Since all of my other writing friends have been posting these nifty little progress bars, I will, too!

The Wolf Prince

61355 / 100000 words. 61% done!

My chapters are getting longer and longer as I forge deeper into the book. My current chapter-in-progress is over 7900 words so far, and still only about 75% done. I have a feeling that I'm being optimistic when I state that my word-count goal is marketable 100k words or so...I haven't hit the halfway turning point of my outline yet. 120k is probably more realistic, at least for the first draft.

...I have this problem with writing really long books in a market that wants short (70k - 90k) novels because no one has time to read any more.

Okay, off to enjoy the rest of my evening of veg. I finished most of the audio editing for the podcast last night, and am brain-dead today as a result. Time for a Top Gear marathon!

My friend Louise, a talented amateur actress, is over at my place this afternoon, recording the first chapter of TWIST OF HONOR.

I love audiobooks, and I had the idea a couple of months ago of recording a couple of excerpts from the book as a way to do something a little different in the way of PR.

It sounds really good! We had some hiccups with the recording software, so we're in the middle of re-recording a bunch of stuff. Louise is being very patient with my fumbling attempts at managing the recording software.

And she's really making the story come alive with different voices and different accents. Wow. I'm so pleased...I'll have to edit in the copyright notice, and a bit of music at the beginning and end before I release the podcast, but hopefully it will be ready for download by the end of next week.

Afternoon baby shower was lovely--Nick produced an exquisite spread of food, including mini-sandwiches on homemade brioche, a delicious cold Indian-style dish of chickpeas in an herbed yogurt sauce, lamb-beef meatballs with spiced yogurt, and a watermelon-strawberry agua fresca that perfectly lovely.

It was also 96 degrees and they have no air conditioning in the house. I had a great time, but am home now, feeling sweaty and utterly wrung-out from the heat.

The cake was very well-received. I'll definitely make the chocolate ganache filling again--the dense, bittersweet chocolate goodness was a perfect match to the four-berry puree.

Photos here (the safari-themed cake is the last picture in the set).

Whew. It's 10 pm, and I'm tired!

However, cake for tomorrow's baby shower at Chez Brisoux is officially baked, filled, and decorated. By request, it's a safari-themed cake, to match the baby bedding that the prospective parents picked out at Target.

I've spent the last four hours hunched on a stool in my kitchen, rolling out pastel green fondant, using a leaf-shaped cutter, and then carefully cutting a pattern into the fondant with a paring knife to create a decorative border of palm fronds. It looks really nice, and I'm pleased with how it turned out, but it was a lot more labor-intensive than I first thought it would be.

Cake is chocolate brownie cake filled with dark chocolate ganache and four berry puree (strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries), covered with chocolate buttercream and fondant. Except for the fondant, everything was made from scratch.

I'll take some photos tomorrow and post them. My friend Pirri has the safari animal cake toppers which we'll place on the cake once we arrive at the shower.

Now it's time to put my feet up and catch up on the last few episodes of Dollhouse.

I'm happy to report that the dinner party was a huge success. I was so exhausted when it was over, though--between the housecleaning and the cooking, my feet were killing me by the end of the evening!

The lamb, potatoes, and asparagus all turned out really well. I wasn't as thrilled with the red wine reduction sauce--it was very sour to begin with, so I had to mess with it a bit to mellow out the flavors. It did make a nice accompaniment to the lamb, but I didn't really think it was worth all the effort to simmer down the broth and the wine.

The desserts were a big hit--Pirri went into transports over the blueberry ice cream cake (which ended up being more of a blueberry sorbet, because the ratio of pureed blueberries was 4:3 with the cream custard base), and the hazelnut gelato and mango-lime sorbet were also well-received.

Of course, I cooked way too much food for six people, so I have a lot of leftovers, including a lot of leftover desserts. O, woe is me! *g*

Now, I'm off to have a hike and a picnic with my mom for Mother's Day

Pirri's birthday was this week, and it's Mother's Day on Sunday, so I'm hosting a Saturday evening dinner party at my place for Nick, Pirri, Sylvia (Nick's Mom), my mom, and Dad.

Planned menu:

• Assorted cheeses, served with crackers and a Sonoma Valley Sauvignon Blanc
• roasted boneless leg of lamb with spice rub, served with a red wine reduction sauce
• roasted baby red potatoes, tossed with olive oil and fresh minced garlic
• steamed asparagus, served with homemade Hollandaise sauce
• homemade blueberry ice cream cake
• hazelnut gelato
• mango-lime sorbet

I still haven't decided which wine to serve with the main course...I have a nice Australian Shiraz, but I'm sort of hoping that Nick will offer to bring a couple bottles of red from his stash. He's much better at pairing wines with food than I am.

The desserts are all made and safely stored in my freezer. The lamb is defrosting in my fridge. Tonight, I start my massive pre-guest decluttering and housecleaning. Gotta figure out how to unlatch and deploy the built-in leaves that will supposedly turn my little four-seater dining table into a six-seater.
 

Am finally getting over this cold...my voice came back on Wednesday, though I spent a day sporting the husky, sultry tones of a phone sex worker, and I went back to work.

Yesterday (Thursday) was not a good day. My parents were returning from a 50-day Caribbean/trans-Atlantic/Mediterranean/Black Sea cruise, and missed a connection due to a flight delay.

They were re-booked to another flight, but to SFO, and right smack dab in the middle of rush hour. Traffic was, of course, horrendous, and not helped by the frenzy of road construction on the approaches to the San Mateo Bridge.
( And then I received my first traffic ticket... )

Monday--am still coughing and blowing my nose like mad, plus I am still voiceless. Decided to sacrifice a day's pay and stay home from work today. Keh.

So, I've been wading through my to-be-viewed pile of DVDs while waiting for this cold to pass. Finally got around to viewing the first few episodes of Tengen Toppen Gurren Lagann, a series that's received a lot of Internet buzz since it first began airing.

( My conclusion after watching the first three or four episodes--well-done, but not my cuppa. )

::pitiful cough, sniffle::

Yeah, I'm ill. If it wasn't for the coughing, I'd welcome the opportunity to spend a weekend at home in my jammies.

If I can scrape together any brain cells, I'll tackle the next scene of The Wolf Prince. If I can't...well, I have a large stack of loaned DVDs that I haven't yet watched.

Finished writing the first draft of chapter 5 of The Wolf Prince last weekend; this has been a busybusybusy week, with the added terror of prepping for a video author interview that was canceled at the last moment. Haven't started actually writing chapter 6 yet, but I've been thinking a lot about it, and am hoping to finish it by Sunday night.

Tried making a caramel ice cream recipe that the cookbook author was absolutely raving about, and found it kind of "eh," even after I doctored it up with some fresh orange zest and a shot of Grand Marnier. I am sad at its mediocrity because it was kind of messy to make, involving multiple bowls and a large stock pot used to caramelize the cup-and-a-half of sugar, then to quench the resulting caramel with 3.5 cups of a milk-cream mixture that frothed and bubbled and steamed like crazy when I added it, splattering my cooktop. 

It's the proper shade of caramel brown, but the flavor is blandly sweet, tasting more of the vanilla bean I simmered in the caramel milk mixture than actual caramel. Maybe I'll let the sugar go a few more seconds if I ever make this again, to give it a smokier flavor.

I added a double-handful of chopped, freshly-toasted almonds, and that improved things quite a bit, but this still is never going to be my favorite flavor. As a rule, I like sharper tastes--coffee, mint, etc.

The texture, however, is fabulous. I played with running the blades on medium rather than the recommended lowest-speed setting, which whips the ice cream batter as it's freezing in the bowl, and produces a delicately airy confection that remains relatively soft even right out of the freezer, rather than the dense gelato which achieves the consistency of wet concrete when left to harden up.

Here's the score so far on my ice cream experiments:

• Mexican Chocolate - Very good, will make again
• Banana-Chocolate-Bailey's - okay but a little too alcoholic-tasting. Probably won't make again
• Hazelnut Gelato - OHMYGOD delicious
• Coffee Gelato - OHMYGOD delicious
• Mango-Lime Sorbet - OHMYGOD delicious
• Caramel ice cream - So-so. Not bad, but really not worth the effort and mess involved in making the batter.

The caramel ice cream is coming to work with me on Monday, and I will dispose of it by sharing with my co-workers. In the meanwhile, I think I'll try my hand at either Cherry Garcia or another batch of hazelnut gelato this weekend.

Finished Chapter 5 of The Wolf Prince, after a stern pep talk by Jennise after I complained about how unhappy I was with my first draft of this book. She reminded me that the whole purpose of a "vomit draft" is to get the damned story down on paper (or disk, as the case may be) and worry about making it all pretty and descriptive and Meaningful during rewrites.

So, I sat down and pounded out the next three scenes. I think the skeleton is sound, but yeah, the writing needs work. But not until I'm done with the rest of this first draft.

Ended up making mango-lime sorbet for Pirri's visit. When I made a Costco run on Thursday, I found a 5lb bag of frozen and sliced/peeled mangoes, which is excellent since I had wanted to try making the following recipe, but had previously quailed at the difficulty of defleshing 2.5 lbs of fresh mangoes. They also had 5 lb bags of limes at Costco, so I was able to purchase the ingredients for two batches of sorbet.

http://elise.com/recipes/archives/005119lime_mango_sorbet.php

I substituted white rum for the tequila in the recipe. It turned out fabulously--the fresh lime juice really enhanced the mango flavor of the sorbet.

...was coffee ice cream. I used this recipe and it's OH MY GOD! delicious. (As recommended, I used decaf coffee beans for the infusion step).

Made a couple of alterations to the recipe, mainly to add two tablespoons of Kahlua and two tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa.

I think I will have to make another batch on Friday for my friend Pirri's anticipated visit on Saturday because the present container is dwindling rapidly. I may add roasted almonds this time.

Yum. Yum. Yum.

On a personal note, I've been busy and exhausted for the last couple of weeks, mostly due to a project at work, but also with the cake commission. On the bright side--hey, my chances for a contract renewal at Big Oil in June look very hopeful. That would be very good, not only because of the continued income (I'd really like to visit my relatives in Germany this September) but also because I really like this job and my co-workers.

On the downside...I haven't done much fiction writing over the past three weekends, due to other committments. I am determined to sit down this weekend and finish pounding out Chapter 5 of The Wolf Prince.

I finally finished watching this series, and my overall reaction is WOW!

Complex storytelling, a wonderful gothic atmosphere, a deft blending of science, shamanism, and Shinto beliefs, and some very emotionally satisfying character arcs. Most of the setups from the early episodes are paid off, though not in the ways I expected, and the tense, angsty tone of series carried through to the end, when we got redemption and healing. Loss, love, secrets, corporate espionage, small-town Japan, grief, anger, betrayal, loyalty, friendship, and healing...and all of these things blended together in something altogether lovely and compelling and occasionally very creepy.

And, most astonishing of all, it has a happy ending based on character growth plus a bit of cloak-and-dagger intrigue. I was convinced for much of this series that things would end Badly for the main characters, but the show's creators managed to push the characters to their limits, and use that trial by fire to find their strengths rather than crush them. It's also a testimony to the power of friendship and family, without being saccharine or cliched.

This series is going on my keeper shelf if it's ever released in North America. Grade: A

Scrabble cake finished and delivered! Whew!

The online acquaintance who commissioned the cake was really pleased. So pleased, in fact, that she insisted on paying me more than the price I'd quoted her.

(Now the great kitchen cleanup begins...)

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakesbykarin/