Almost NaNoWriMo 2009!

Less than four hours to go until the official start time, and I've only just now been smacked upside the head by the inspiration fairy. Moxie Sis is joining me this year, and I hear there's at least one intrepid young woman at Emma Willard (you know who you are) who has the hutzpah to take on the challenge via the Young Writer's Program. GO US! I'm full of endorphins after a day of hauling buckets of pavers off the (still) leaky roof in prep for a replacement, but I don't think the exercise fully explains the jazz hands I just spontaneously executed. Yes, jazz hands. I'm filled with cheesiness but really that excited about my basic idea. We'll see how it feels three weeks in, eh?

My posts to Mountaineer Moxie are likely to be short in November, but I do want to at least give a sense what this feels like, both to remind myself before I tackle it again in 2010 and to goose others into doing it. And hey! You can start late! Lots of folks do.... Mind you, they are generally nutters -- much like those people watching on the sidelines of a marathon who just rip off their coats and start running with the pack -- but the good news is that unlike a marathon, you don't really have to train for this. You still may puke after a couple hours, but you're not going to have a heart attack or tear your hamstring.

So what are you waiting for?! Write already!

you thought I was kidding about those mop buckets, didn't you?

prize-winning cornbread

yessiree bob, I done won 1st prize in the NPR county fair bread category for the totally kickin' buttermilk sage cornbread. Tastes amazing, looks stunning, and I have the Boy Scout to thank. He tried this out for the July 4th roof deck party we threw at our place, and guests were raving, so I thought I might have a shot. My 4-H leader would be proud.

Taken from this book:

ground cloves = caustic spice

Who knew? Keep that in mind if you're trying the spice tin solution, though. The plastic window on top melted and the tin grew strange crud on the inside corners. Not something you'd want to be sprinkling on your molasses cookies, either. We'll be keeping ground cloves in glass from here on out.

garden notes for 2010

The community and home garden are the tidiest they've been in months -- just a few squash and beans and tomatoes to harvest, though the groundcherries are only ripening now and that means one more round of making jam (well, marmalade, actually). Winter crops of fava beans, carrots, beets, radishes, and garlic are going in this weekend and then we have about 6 months of blissful time off before I start getting the itch to grow stuff again. Oh, and I did manage to plant some bitty wee crocuses, daffodils, and iris in the front tree box last weekend, and it finally is starting to look a little more civilized out there. Not a small challenge when you're trying to choose items and a design that won't tick off the on-street parkers while discouraging the dog walkers.

Anyway, here are my top 7 "what I learned this year" items that may be helpful for my fellow Zone 7 gardeners:

1. plant more groundcherries. These are awesome little fruits that look like Chinese lanterns on the outside and tiny, orange, cherry tomatoes on the inside (a.k.a., Cape Gooseberries, but it turns out those are larger cousins). Stunning as a February dessert because the husks keep it stable for months; just peel back the papery outside and dip the fruit in a little white chocolate. Tastes like...well, it's hard to describe. It tastes like rhubarb, meaning it tastes like itself. Tangy and sweet, with a tropical vibe. Anyway, we're turning most of ours into the aforementioned marmalade and likely will plant them directly in the ground next year. Containers are OK but require a lot of water, and they didn't really take off until cooler weather hit at the end of August.
2. don't plant scarlet runner beans for food. I couldn't figure out why beans weren't setting. All summer long, lots of pretty crimson flowers and happily buzzing bees, but no beans. I had extra shoots that I gave away and one novice gardener was especially nonplussed, asking me twice what she was doing wrong. Turns out, nothing. It's too hot for bean production here. I'll give the handful of dried beans I pulled to the Moxie Sis and fam to see if the mountains are a kinder climate. They are pretty, but my space is at a premium and I'm DONE with major harvesting now. Every flower in the few vines left turns into a bean now, and they are just hanging there, mocking me.
   
3. don't plant cantaloupe. Oh, they were pretty, those 'lopes, and I had 6 fat ones, but like the scarlet runners, it's too hot for them here. Insipid, pale-fleshed milquetoasts they were. Wildly disappointing, and I'll be hitting the super and farmer's market for mine from here on out. Plus, the Boy Scout is not a fan and when you have 3 ripe cantaloupe and 1 consumer, you're going to get sick of them.
4. don't plant tomatoes in the home beds. They need consistent sun for 3 months and my backyard bed exposure changes wildly between May and September. That, and I was ready to kill flocks of thieving birds and scurries of pilfering squirrels after a while. Gardening is supposed to be peaceful. The community garden may have human vegetablenappers, but at least I didn't have to watch them do it out the kitchen window while I was trying to eat breakfast.
   
5. don't plant sunflowers. So pretty, bobbing in the late July breeze. So maddening to watch the aforementioned squirrels chew through the stem, right below the head, so they fell to the ground for easier access. Don't look now, but that tree rat just created another instant smorgasbord for all his little vermin friends!
   
6. get 2-3 Roma tomatoes and compost the heck out of them. We tried a variety of tomatoes, but since our main goal was to can them, we had a clear winner. One Roma plant that we put in the section of community garden that had been well-composted by previous owners probably yielded 2/3 of our gazillion quarts of tomatoes and salsa. We're not messing with heirlooms or eating tomatoes next year; we can go to the farmers market for those.
   
7. plant LOTS more cukes. According to family lore, the Boy Scout's first word was "pickle" and there's an excellent reason for that: he adores them. I didn't realize quite how much. We made quarts and quarts of Grandma K's lime pickles this summer, but we had to raid the local markets to get enough pounds for a full recipe. I had 3 hills (2 at home, 1 at the community garden) and I'm swapping beans for pickling cucumbers next year. We need to try our hand at dills, too. Anyone got a 10-gallon pickling crock we can borrow? The plastic mop buckets we used this year can only hold so much....
   

Franch oatmeal cookies

A couple weeks ago, I was craving sugar and thought about making an eighth...no a quarter....what the heck, a whole batch of cookies. I didn't have many options without paying a visit to the Harris Teeter, soooooo far away at two whole blocks, but hey, it was raining. I think. Or it should have been. All right, so after I get home at the end of the workday, it's hard to motivate me to go out again. You want me to have a pint of Guinness with you? Better do it before I have the chance for cats to curl up all over me, with the purring and the sleepy blinking and the "pet me some more" head-butting. And did I mention the purring? Anyway, these cookies are the result of cocooning and what I had on hand that night.

Largely a recipe from the lid of the Quaker Oats Old-Fashioned Oatmeal canister, you'll need to follow the proportions and ingredients and directions *precisely* to get the crispy-chewy-thin texture. Can't emphasize that enough. If you do, you end up with a treat that's kind of like those fancy tuile cookies you sometimes see Julia Child & Co. make on TV, but with spice quirks and an American twist. (That’d be the oatmeal.) In the spirit of Better Off Dead, I've christened them “Frahnch Oatmeal Cookies.”

Dave -- have at it!

ingredients

• 1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 ¼ c firmly packed brown sugar
• ½ c granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 ¾ c all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 c old-fashioned Quaker Oats

instructions

1. Heat oven to 375º. Spread oats on cookie sheets and toast in the oven until browned. Cool to room temperature. Why bother with this step? Click here to find out.
2. While oats are toasting, beat butter until it's the consistency of thick whipped cream, then slowly add sugars until well-blended and fluffy. Do not rush this. It may take as long as 5 minutes, but when you're through, you will have the overwhelming urge to scoop up great gobs of it with your crooked index finger and pop it in your mouth, the rest of the recipe be damned. Resist. This is how you know it's time for the next step.
3. Add eggs one at a time, beating in between additions. Add milk and vanilla and beat well. Your mixture should still be light, but have a little more body.
4. Combine flour, baking soda, spices, and salt; mix well. Stir in cooled oats, and mix well. It's going to be the most airy cookie dough you've ever seen in your life. Nothing like a sturdy chocolate chip, maybe not even as stiff as some batter breads. The only thing I can think of that's fluffier is meringue cookies.
5. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet about 2.5" apart. The cookies will ooze into very flat disks within a couple minutes of baking, so don't put them too close together if you're trying for perfect edges.
6. Bake 8-10 minutes for a chewy cookie or 12-13 minutes for a crisp cookie. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet, remove to wire rack as fast as you can. If the first batch sticks, use parchment paper on your cookie sheets. Cool completely; the butter and sugar content is high enough to blister your tongue if you don't wait at least 5 minutes.

Makes 4 ½-5 dozen cookies.

glutton for punishment

50,000 words in 30 days.

Wrestling with a laptop keyboard that keeps randomly popping the cursor into new spots all over the page while I’m trying to get down a sentence that falls out of my head faster than I can type it. Craving 5 teensy minutes of editing time with the dreck-filled paragraph I just wrote, and knowing that if I cave, I will not meet the daily word count. Ducking into the guest bedroom immediately after Thanksgiving dinner to smush out a few more sentences, in-laws be darn-it-all-to-hecked. (I like my in-laws.) Repeatedly wiping the tear-soaked keyboard and my streaming nose with my shirtsleeves on the last day, not because I’m almost finished, but because I’m killing off a supporting character and can’t stop writing to walk 50 feet down the hall for a box of tissues. And I don’t even *like* that stupid coon dog!

National Novel Writing Month, folks. One of the best, hardest things I’ve ever done.
www.nanowrimo.org

Join me for another round in November this year? Registration is now open – and it’s 100% FREE!