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Posts Tagged ‘persistence’

I Like Cookies (You Too?)

Posted in Food and..., Likes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

It’s like this: for the past couple of weeks I’ve spent a wee bit (ok, a lot) of time perfecting my chocolate chip cookie recipe.

(It also strikes me that I do a lot of recipe-related posts on Fridays. Food is definitely on my list of #ThingsILike:)

When I moved north of the border everything changed, including my usual butter, flour, chips, and oven. Mr. Man also likes his cookies with a bit more cakiness than I had with my previous recipe, so it was time to rethink, rewrite and retest.*

I know, I know, hard duty. How I sacrifice! But now Mr. Man (and you, fine readers!) have a new recipe to enjoy. Hope you like it!**

 

Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 1/4 cups [280g] flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt [a pinch less if you use salted butter]
2 sticks [8 ounces or 228g] butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups [300g] brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs, large
1 cup [175g] semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 350F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper if you hate stuck-on cookies.
2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt [I sift, some prefer a whisk or fork, use whatever works for you].
3. In a large bowl, mix butter and sugar until creamy, about 2 minutes.
4. Add vanilla and eggs, one at a time, mix until well combined.
5. Gradually add flour mixture and mix until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
6. Scoop ~1-inch balls onto cookie sheets.***
7. Bake for 11-13 minutes depending on dough temperature and preferred crunchiness factor. Let cool two minutes before transferring to rack.
…………
* I’m still playing with this a tiny bit (for the greater good, you understand, not because I want to bake more cookies… ok yeah, I just want to bake more cookies:). I’ll add any updates here.

** If you’re interested in how tweaking various ingredients and other factors influence cookie characteristics, Handle the Heat’s Ultimate Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies (parts 1 through 4) is a good place to start.

*** At this point you can either bake immediately or chill to allow the flavors to develop. I’ll chill if I have time, but I don’t always have the patience:) My compromise strategy: bake a sheet right away, then make balls with the rest of the dough and freeze on a lined cookie sheet. When hard, store the dough in a plastic bag and voila, you’ve got almost instant cookies for the next couple of weeks days whatever:)

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This Is How You Do It

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 11, 2016| Leave a Comment »

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.
― Neil Gaiman

Thankfully, I have cookies:)

 

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Productivity Through Gamification

Posted in Likes, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 6, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Today’s Thing I Like is a way to make productivity easier and fun. Also? Guilt-free rewards for writing and lots else, always awesome.

Let’s see, how to introduce this idea?

If the only part of that sentence that made sense to you was “Christmas” fear not! Explanations forthwith.

•

Part the First: Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary is a terrific author and puppeteer with a string of quality novels and shorts under her belt. She’s the sort of person who suffers a puppeteering injury (yep, that’s a thing) and decides to get back into writing in her down time. And wins a Hugo. Then another one. And another one:)

For those of you interested in learning about writing, she’s also active in the Writing Excuses podcast (transcripts are also available for those who prefer the written word).

 

Part the Second: Habitica

This online platform helps you set up a to do list and rewards you in (fake, sadly, but still) gold pieces when you finish things. It’s free to join and while you can subscribe for things like avatar and quest extras, you don’t need to spend a cent to take advantage of the productivity options. There are lots of productivity and gamification platforms and apps and trackers out there, but this one is working for me.

This is my Habitica avatar, mount and pet, all decked out in rainbow fun.RainbowRumpus

Habitica lets you track what you need to do and, just as importantly, what you have already done. Then (and this is the extra fun bit) when you’re asking yourself if you’ve worked enough to deserve that double mochaccino half-caf* you’re craving, you can go over to your (fake, but still) treasure chest and cash in gold for a reward.

True, you still have to pay for that half-caf with real money, but! It is no longer a guilty pleasure, it is a well-deserved prize. Set up whatever rewards you like, from a trip to the cafe to a book-like object to dinner and a movie.

 

Part the Third: Ink Slingers

A Habitica guild or assemblage of people with similar interests, in this case, writing. You don’t need to join a guild but if you’re the sort of person who likes chat breaks with their productivity, consider it. If you’re the sort of person who wants to eliminate even the possibility of distraction on their way to accomplishment, well, don’t.

•

How Does This All Come Together?

Now, I’m not usually into apps for this and groups for that. I tend to just forge ahead. Even so, this  system works for me. Maybe it will work for you too, or maybe all you need is a handwritten list of your daily step count. Whatever works to help track measurable progress toward achievable goals.

I may still have a tiny touch of game/loot love left over from my time in Warcraft, and if it works for Mary, well. I asked if I could pretty please join Ink Slingers and then promptly became the walliest of wallflowers, but it’s still nice knowing that other people in my guild are working toward similar goals. It’s also nice to have a list that keeps me on track and lets me reward myself when I cross things off.

It’s even nicer to enjoy a tasty adult beverage (50 gold), guilt free. Now excuse me while I go check “blog post” off my list:)

……….
* Ok, I don’t drink coffee, but the great thing about this system is that it lets you pick your poison. Hot chocolate with whipped cream and Bailey’s, anyone?

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Getting Happy

Posted in Likes, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 5, 2016| Leave a Comment »

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy… you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”

― Stephen King

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A Comfort to the Lost

Posted in Likes, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 6, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Life is not supposed to be neat. And it’s a comfort. It’s a comfort to all of us who have messed up. And then you find your way back…

— JK Rowling

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Time for a Syrup Tsunami!

Posted in Food and..., Likes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 1, 2016| Leave a Comment »

For today’s installment of #ThingsILike, I give you maple syrup. (Honestly, is there anyone out there who does not enjoy this delicious treat from the northern woods?) Lucky me, it looks like this year’s wacky weather patterns have resulted in a veritable tsunami of syrup!

For those of you not intimately familiar with the process of maple syrup production, it goes like this:

[Maple] trees store starch in their trunks and roots before the winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap in late winter and early spring. Maple trees can be tapped by drilling holes into their trunks and collecting the exuded sap, which is processed by heating to evaporate much of the water, leaving the concentrated syrup.

Here’s a video to showing a basic tap and bucket assembly, but I’ve seen outfits with setups running what look like miles of bright blue tubing directly from the trees to the sugar shack.

Even with modern improvements, this isn’t the sort of agricultural process that can be exported to alternate climes. The trees require cold winters and sap production levels depend on spring temperatures finely balanced between colder nights and warmer days.

It turns out that the weather this March has been pretty near perfect, at least if you are a sugar maple. Waking trees drink up groundwater during the day, convert the stored starches in their roots to sugar, and pump the resulting sap up their trunks and into waiting sap buckets.

Collect, boil, repeat, at least until the sap stops running.

Making syrup requires a lot of work and patience. The old fashioned way involves big black kettles and a steady supply of wood to keep the fire going. Even with new, more efficient boilers, reducing sap to syrup takes hours.

My mother took us to a friend’s sugaring party when I was a child. My brother and I ran from tree to tree, hauling half-full buckets through the snowy woods to the kettle and back. The fresh sap tasted like the Entish draughts of my imagination, its clear cool taste instantly refreshing. We also poured hot syrup onto plates of snow to make maple taffy. Freaking amazing.

As luck (or clever planning?) would have it, I am located in the heart of maple syrup country. Quebec and Ontario are the largest maple syrup producers in Canada.

If you happen to be in Ontario this weekend and you love maple syrup as much as I do, you’re in luck. It’s Maple Weekend and I plan to stock up for the year. Because delicious!

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Fail Gloriously!

Posted in Likes, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

— Bruce Lee

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Always Through

Posted in Likes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 18, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I’m banging my head against a data problem so I’ll have to set aside the in-depth and incisive essay on the mating habits of Salarian scientists I had planned (so sad, but maybe next week;).

Instead, today’s thing I like is this image and the sheer effort the landscape represents. It’s also a shout-out to my Irish relatives (currently recovering from St. Patrick’s Day) and to the fact that people have been solving problems for millennia. Look at those walls, that can’t have been easy:)

The best way out is always through.
― Robert Frost

So, persistence for the win. With that in mind, back to work!

 

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No More Saucy Wenches for Me!

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 16, 2016| 4 Comments »

Today I want to spotlight a collection of writing advice. It comes via OWW, the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. OWW is a fee-based workshop but this advice is available to all.

These short essays discuss topics on writing in general, how to get your work read (if you’re into workshops like OWW, or the free Critters or Codex, for example), and the publishing business overall. I like Nicola Griffith’s piece about avoiding cliches:*

Don’t write “her heart stopped” unless you mean she died. Don’t talk about saucy serving wenches in an inn where the beef stew is thick and hearty and the ale is fresh, nutty, and strong… Why aren’t “serving wenches” ever tired, middle-aged women? Why is the beer rarely yellow, or thin, or cloudy with sediment?

So true.** There’s a reason the average human lives a much longer and healthier life than their ancestors did just a century ago:

In Japan, 72 has become the new 30, as the likelihood of a 72-year-old modern-day person dying is the same as a 30-year-old hunter-gatherer ancestor who lived 1.3 million years ago.

Modern sanitation, medicine and quality infrastructure (for those handy extras like clean drinking water) for the win!

So, keep a weather eye out for dangerous and terrifying pitfalls you have to escape in the nick of time as you navigate the winding path of language clichés:) But keep writing. Remember, all’s well that ends well! (And that’s just about enough of that;)

While we’re on the subject of advice, I’ll supplement the OWW site and my previous posts on writing advice with a link from Brain Pickings. This collection of wisdom is from a variety of writers, genre and otherwise:

#49: Neil Gaiman’s Advice to Aspiring Writers
“You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.”

Some of this advice may not apply to you; I tend not to relate to Bukowski, for example. But some of it may, and I hope it’s useful.

Since I’m throwing in everything but the kitchen sink today, let me close with this great post from Elizabeth Bear: “everybody’s scared of things that they don’t understand and all the living they don’t do.”

Accept that there will be a lot of failures along the way, and that you can come back from nearly any mistake that doesn’t involve making a left turn in front of an oncoming semi.

Excellent advice.

Write, rewrite, finish. Do it again.

…………
* Some of the examples are also about uncomfortable -isms. Racism and sexism, for instance, are more problematic than simple clichés and should be resolved at a deeper level. Obviously.
** As a side note, if you’re curious about what and how people ate in the Western Middle Ages, SF Canada writer Krista D. Ball has a detailed and useful book on realism in fantasy food: What Kings Ate and Wizards Drank.

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Encouragement

Posted in Likes, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 9, 2016| Leave a Comment »

For my mother and anyone else facing a challenge today:

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
― Confucius

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