One of my new cousins has begun a blogging meme, and while my first thought was "... my blog is more about books and writing than housewifey stuff," as it turns out, I do post recipes here. I'm in, then.

Tasty Tuesday


American Catholics aren't required to go fish-only or meatless on Fridays anymore (except during Lent), but I've tried to do so more regularly when we're home for dinner. It beats trying to dream up some other form of sacrifice. This recipe, however, doesn't taste like sacrifice--I couldn't believe how well it turned out. It was also incredibly easy to make.

Cheesy Potato Soup
(very loosely adapted from here)

3 cups peeled, diced potatoes (I didn't measure this--just diced up five medium-size bakers)
2 cups water
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp minced onion
2 tbsp butter
2 tsp parsley
2 cups milk
About 1 cup cheddar cheese, cubed (I probably went a little over that ... I like cheese)

1. Put potatoes, water and salt into pot and boil until the potatoes begin to fall apart when pierced by a fork.
2. Saute minced onion in butter until clear.
3. Add milk, parsley, onion and butter to potatoes and cook until pot begins to steam again.
4. Reduce heat to low and add cheese. Simmer until cheese is melted and well blended.
5. Add pepper and more salt to taste, if desired.

Easy, easy, easy. I served it with asparagus and red pepper broiled with olive oil and salt, and huckleberry muffins.

Note: The soup serves 3-4, depending on how hungry you are and what you serve with it, so you might want to double it if you're cooking for many.

All right, I stayed up until after 3 AM writing last night. Hopefully this post makes sense.

Having read well beyond midnight many times out of absolute need to make sure the characters survive, I find it interesting to have a similar experience while writing. When I shut my computer down around eleven, I had left my protagonist in a terribly dark moment. And even though I knew she'd survive--it wouldn't be much of a book if she died in Part One--I just couldn't leave her there. I got out of bed at 11:30 and wrote her into a place of comparative ease.

Made it from page 62 to page 92 just over the weekend, thank you very much. That made me happy.

The whole weekend felt productive. On Saturday I got hit with inspiration and did a huge portion of my editing work for a project some friends and I have going. Yesterday Lou and I went to Henderson's and I bought an encyclopedia of astronomy and Inkspell (sequel to Inkheart), which I can't read yet--there are at least two other books I have to read first. And while I've been trying very hard to take a break from writing on Sundays, I wanted to get to my story so badly that I gave in and wrote--and wrote and wrote.

It was incredibly fun. But productive weekend meant less time paying attention to my longsuffering husband, so I'm going to go make him a nice dinner now.

Writing update: I've revised my NaNoWriMo novel all the way to page 62, or about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through the book. Which means that I need to speed up to make my March 20 deadline--which I need to do, because I have other projects lined up for afterward.

This week, despite tolerable productivity, hasn't been the most motivating for me.

I've invested a lot of hours in writing this novel, staying up late, forgetting to eat lunch till two in the afternoon, pouring myself into the plot and phrasing--and I've got a hundred pages of another work waiting for the moment my writing focuses are free--and this week it has all felt like a waste of time and energy. "Making up lies," as worthy old women might have said in another time. And for what? Who knows if these books will ever contribute a dime to this household? Who knows if they will interest anyone enough to persevere through to the end? (I like my little tales, but I created the people therein and I love them dearly.)

Here's why I keep going:

" 'Why do innocents suffer?' can't be answered in any interesting way with syllogisms. The syllogisms may be necessary, to prevent internal contradictions. But only paintings and novels and movies, the lives of the saints, and above all the Passion narrative, can truly bring us to accept the possibility that God is merciful, that there is a Heaven where even our wounds -- even our children's wounds -- are like the glorified Wounds of Christ."
Thank you, Eve Tushnet. I needed to hear that. Oh, and I loved the rest of the article too.

The book Mo was reading that night was bound in pale blue linen. Later, Meggie remembered that too. What unimportant little details stick in the memory.

"Mo, there's someone out in the yard!"

Her father raised his head and looked at her with the usual absent expression he wore when she interrupted his reading. It always took him a few moments to find his way out of that other world, the labyrinth of printed letters.

"Someone out in the yard? Are you sure?"

"Yes. He's staring at our house."

Mo put down his book. "So what were you reading before you went to sleep? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?"

Author: Cornelia Funke

Synopsis: Meggie Folchart lives with her father, a bookbinder, in a house filled with books--but she has never been able to convince him to read aloud to her. When a stranger named Dustfinger shows up in the night, she embarks on a bookish adventure involving magical creatures, a villain and his cruel henchmen, a boy from the Arabian Nights, and the mother who had vanished when Meggie was only three.

Notes: I adored this book. Despite the English text's having been translated (from the original German), the writing kept me enchanted--fanciful description, spunky little pre-teen heroine, quirky characters, and murderous suspense. I'm actually a little bit afraid to get the sequels.

The tale also has its poignant moments--things twelve-year-old Meggie only begins to comprehend, but she sees enough to let her readers know what is really in her father's heart.

The quotes from various children's books, heading up every chapter, add to the fun.

This video explains the difference between the general perception of homeschoolers and the truth about most of those who were or are educated at home. It gave me some good laughs.

Maybe there should be a third category for those of us who fit the extremely-socially-awkward profile in high school ... and, indeed, perhaps into our early twenties ... but turned out relatively normal. (At least, I think I'm relatively normal now. Compared to my teen years, the improvement is extreme--you would all admit it if you knew. What--I don't have any pictures of my awkward teen years on my computer? Aww. Such a shame.)

Hat tip to The Knight Shift for the link to this interview with Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes. I thoroughly enjoyed that this morning.

It amuses me a little that the header for the piece describes Mr. Watterson as "reclusive." As far as I can tell, that word gets applied to a lot of writers, especially those who aren't anxious to have a lot of press or public interaction, as if the desire to get out there and live fame to the fullest were normal and anything lesser were therefore suspect.

Maybe he's just an introvert. A lot of writers are, after all--writing means spending quite a lot of time in your own head. I go crazy without sufficient time in mine.

Which reminds me of this little write-up on introverts--one of my favorite old articles. The author writes as if he knows me.

As someone watching from the bottom of the beanstalk, it's been interesting staring up at the battle of the publishing industry giants this weekend. If you haven't heard, Amazon temporarily pulled all Macmillan books from their site when Macmillan wanted the Kindle pricing setup to look like the brand-new iPad's.

A couple of the literary agents I read have posted their thoughts:

Rachelle Gardner: Publishing Smackdown: Let the Games Begin

Nathan Bransford: The Kindle Missile Crisis

Thus far, having not yet bought an e-book device, I am not sure how I feel about this. Competition among companies is healthy for all of us, so I favor the iPad and Kindle duking it out a little.

The converse is that an e-book has certain disadvantages against the three-dimensional copy, which is why I haven't taken a lot of interest in e-book readers yet. I don't think I'd pay $15 (on the current economic scale) for something I couldn't loan out and that doesn't make my house look more like a library. But that's me.