How about a bit of free fiction today? I’m still on day job vacation but had to take a meeting. Thankfully, my work day was nothing like this piece by David Shultz over at Diabolical Plots:
Kondo barked his orders. “Rocco, cover the east window. Valiant, you’re on ammo detail. Pepsi, keep an eye on market changes. Luna, get me a full asset list.”
Our region is doing ok Covid-wise but Delta is starting to make its move and Fall is shaping up to be less than great.
After examining the viral forecast, analyzing daily case counts, counting the weeks since my second vaccination shot, confirming my provider’s vax status, checking my KN95 mask, and consulting a Magic 8 Ball,* this afternoon I am going to get a haircut.
I mean, heck, it’s only been two years;)
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My hair is considerably longer than this at the moment. Photo by Yoann Boyer on Unsplash
* We do not have a Magic 8 Ball, but sometimes it feels like it might come in handy.
Mr Man requested lemon meringue pie the other day. Do I have a recipe for it? I do, that’s not the problem. The problem is that I have too many recipes, taking many paths to the same destination.
And so I set out to make the pie, but also to reduce the stack of notes, hand-written adaptations, and other modifications into the One.
Here’s a snapshot of just some of the recipe pile:*
Does not include all of the many, many online references I used to triangulate the final recipe, but you get the idea.
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So here we have it, the One Pie To Rule Them All (if you like lemon, that is).
The recipe looks a bit complicated but it’s really just a quick crumb crust, a batch of lemon curd, and whipped egg whites.
This works for me, and uses ingredients I can easily access. (I also do things like ignore milliliters and weigh everything in grams.) If you aren’t as into tangy citrus or can’t find Biscoff, modify at will!
crush Biscoff into fine crumbs with food processor or rolling pin
mix in melted butter
press into 9” pie plate (the bottom of a cup measure works well)
bake for ~18 minutes, remove and lower oven to 325F
Filling
mix lemon zest, juice, water and cornstarch until smooth
stir sugar and egg yolks together in a non-reactive pan, place over medium-low heat and add cornstarch mixture and butter
stir frequently until it just simmers and thickens like custard, about 5 minutes for me (taste and add another teaspoon+ of sugar if you fear the tang)
pour into crust and top with meringue
Meringue
combine sugar and cream of tartar in a small bowl
in a larger bowl, whip egg whites to soft peaks
add sugar mixture one tablespoon or so at a time, whipping between, until stiff and shiny
spoon or pipe over filling, touching meringue to crust edges to prevent shrinkage
bake 15 minutes until golden
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Bonus: Lemon Syrup
Because I had organic lemons, I was also able to use the peels for this lemon syrup:
“True” lemon syrup, to distinguish it from the bottle of spiced white wine and lemon syrup I also have in the fridge right now.
I let it steep for about four hours. I don’t have a great citrus press so I strained the peels, then put them in a plastic bag and used a rolling pin to extract the rest of the juice. The result is sweet with a touch of bitterness to ground the flavor, and perfect with seltzer and fresh mint on a hot afternoon.
* I have attributions for some of these recipes but not all. That can happen when I’m away from home and trying to put together a recipe for the in-laws on the fly, with a kitchen and equipment not my own. Thanks for ideas for what to do (and not do) go out to Stella Parks, Mark Bittman, Alton Brown, and many bakers and commenters online.
In my roles as a writer and as a person, I read a lot. Some books I purchase, but many I access through my local library. How great is that?*
So I just spent a non-zero amount of time writing a little AppleScript to automagically run a search in any of the four area library systems that share e-book resources.
Was it necessary? No. I could click through my library portal and into each separate library system for every book I want to check, one stodgy button at a time. Ho hum.
Does this script save time and my wrists and open up new worlds of possibilities?
Yes.
Was it fun to make?
Also yes:)
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I know, it’s a store, not a library. But she’s having so much fun! Photo by Ying Ge on Unsplash
* I love books, and I’m lucky enough to live in a society that supports public libraries. In fact, I made a modest donation to my local library the other day, and hope it helps bring just a little more literacy and knowledge and enjoyment to my city.
I’ve loved coffee ice cream since before I drank coffee, but it’s one of those flavors that doesn’t appeal to everyone. We don’t buy a lot of ice cream and when we do, something like vanilla is more flexible.*
I’m still experimenting with our borrowed Kitchenaid ice cream maker and coffee sounded good. I modified Mark Bittman’s egg-free recipeagain, and it worked for me. Perfect for a hot and sticky summer day!
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Coffee Ice Cream Makes ~1 quart
Ingredients
1 1/2 C. milk (2% worked)
1 C. heavy cream (35%)
1/2 C. coffee
1/2 C. sugar
2 T. cornstarch
1/4 t. salt
1/2 t. vanilla extract
Instructions
1. Stir the cornstarch with 2 T. of the milk make a smooth slurry.
2. Put the remaining milk, cream, coffee, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan and whisk to combine. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture nearly comes to a simmer. Whisk in the cornstarch slurry and vanilla and continue to stir until the mixture thickens a bit, 2 or 3 minutes.
3. Strain the mixture into a bowl. Cover and refrigerate until completely cool, at least 2 hours and preferably overnight. Transfer to an ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s directions.
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* Alone, with pie, with grape juice, with orange concentrate and chocolate shavings, with caramel, with peanut butter and chocolate, with bananas and pecans, with pomegranate seeds, with lemon curd, with… you get the idea.
My father is going through old boxes of photographs and other memorabilia and sent me a story, one of my first, called “The Devil’s Crutch.” I couldn’t write or (as you’ll see) grasp the intricacies of grammar, geography, or complete sentences, but I dictated it to my mother.
First we have the story from when I was, what, maybe three years old? I‘ve changed since then (I can even hold a pen all by myself!), but I tried to understand at least a little of what might have been going through my head that day. Then for fun, I turned it into a drabble.
(My father seemed particularly taken by the word “smitchey.” I no longer know what it means but I kept it.)
* * *
The Devil’s Crutch
Once upon a time there was a old, old house up in the south pole. There in the house there is a little room in the playroom and in the room there was a lot of dust. In the room there was a lot of dolls. The dolls didn’t have dust on them because a little smitchey girl had been playing with them. The house was haunted. And this couple moved in the haunted house and every night a ghost came out at twelve o’clock and every night when the ghost came out the couple woke up and saw the ghost and the ghost disappeared whenever the couple saw the ghost. The ghost disappeared. One night the father and the mother was sleeping on the sofa and the devil’s came instead of the ghost. And the owner of the crutch came to the house with the crutch and the owner of the crutch was the devil.
The End
* * *
Once there was a haunted old house way up in the South Pole. It had a playroom of dusty dolls, a grandfather clock and a crutch like bleached bone.
A family with a smitchey little girl arrived. Every midnight the towering clock cried out. Even when the mother stopped the pendulum, and the father hid the key.
The girl saw a little ghost waving from inside the clock.
She slept huddled under the playroom table. The dolls said it was safer that way.
One night the clock stayed silent and the ghost hid.
Thanks to the dynamics of heat, humidity, and Tropical Storm Fred muscling his way up the East Coast, most of my family members down South were under a tornado warning today.
My father texted to say that they were in the basement because tornado. Cue a round of frantic texting to make sure my hard-of-hearing mother had, in fact, heard the warning. Half an hour later the danger had passed and thankfully, everyone was ok.
Those of you living in places like Tornado Alley, the Caribbean, tsunami-prone coastal region, anywhere currently under a fire warning or similar hot spot may not be impressed, but this is one of the first times my family has had to head to the basement for safety, hunkering down like Neolithic ancestors in caves. I doubt it will be the last. Extreme weather and other such events are on the rise. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that unlike our ancestors, we have first responders, health care workers, disaster preparedness centers, and we can see it coming.
a unit of distance used in astronomy, equal to about 3.26 light years (3.086 × 1013 kilometers). One parsec corresponds to the distance at which the mean radius of the earth’s orbit subtends an angle of one second of arc.
A parsec is a measurement of distance, not time. Twelve of those do not a winning Kessel Run make, but, as millions of fans (and yes, dollars) attest, no one cares. The story works.
These are the things I think about when I’m stuck on a plot point, or deep in historical or technical weeds.
The Joe Pye Weed is in full bloom and buzzing with big bees, small bees and not-bees, and look who stopped by!
I only wish we had the space and sun for a dozen more of these plants, plus scads of milkweed for this monarch and all of its friends. Until then, I’ll do what I can with what I have.
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