IN HER OWN WORDS...

...the Mistress of Sarcasm tells us about her cat.

No, not Neighbor...or Matata...or Hakuna.


Stripes, in 1985.

Long before any of those kitties became a part of our lives, there was Stripes. I’ve written about him before, but never with quite the same eloquence - and Unconventional Orthography - as did the then-seven-year-old Mistress:



Ah, the Innocence of Yoot™!

Bookplate Update!

And yet another choice of bookplates -- in color!

If Remy was President...

Remy came home with this last week or so.

Translation:
If I were President I would...get a pet dog that is a boy and my dog is named piggy. My dog would be smart and talented, really, really talented and I would get a servant

named Bobby and I would go to McDonalds.

Isn't he cute?

And then I found THIS drawing in my notebook by the computer:

hehe

Such an interesting child.

What do you think is going on in that picture?

Acccent on Books . . . and Bookplates

I did an 'event' yesterday at my long-time favorite little bookstore -- I was a regular customer at Accent on Books on Merrimon Avenue in Asheville long before I became an Author.

It's the closest bookstore to where I live, being on the north side of Asheville in the area I often do my shopping. Downtown Asheville is terrific and has another wonderful independent bookstore but it's not as convenient -- the parking thing -- plus it's farther away.

Accent on Books is the kind of friendly, cozy, neighborhood bookstore everyone should have near at hand. Their inventory is carefully selected with a discriminating eye to quality. No, they don't have every book you ever heard of (they could order it though) but their selection is exquisite and they have far more books that I really, really want to read than I could possibly afford.

I was amazed, back in October when I was doing last minute shopping for John's birthday and decided I would love to give him a book of various chicken breeds. I stopped in at A on B, just on the chance . . . And they had one! Gorgeous glossy pictures of every weird sort of chicken, duck, and goose with emus and such to boot! It's The Little Bookstore That Could!

There's something about a bookstore -- going in and looking at all the books, picking them up, leafing through them, being seduced by a beautiful cover or an enticing review. It will be a sad day, if we lose these little bastions of culture.

There was a gratifying turnout yesterday -- some folks I'd met before, most new to me. Some had read all the books; others hadn't read any -- yet. So I rambled on, read bits of Miss Birdie's book, answered questions, and the whole thing felt like being in someone's living room, talking about books. And not just mine. There was an enthusiastic recommendation for Mark de Castrique's Blackman's Castle and votes for Ron Rash's Serena and all of Barbara Kingsolver's stuff . . .

That's the kind of folks you run into at these nice little bookstores. And that's why I always encourage folks to support their local, independent booksellers. These businesses are already feeling squeezed -- between online sellers and the big chains, it's harder and harder for the indies to keep afloat. Add to that, these tough financial times and it's enough to make a bookseller groan.

I'll be doing a few more local signing events (see the calendar over there>>>) and hoping lots of people decide to buy my books as gifts. If you 'd like to share Elizabeth and her world with a friend as a Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza/Solstice/any reason present and you'd like to embellish this (very economical) gift a bit but can't make it to one of my events, I can offer you lovely bookplates, signed and personalized as you specify.

All they'll cost you is the bother of sending me a self-addressed, stamped envelope with directions for the personalizing. Email me -- vicki_laneATmtnarea.net (there's a hot link on my website but I can't put one here) and I'll give you the address to send the SASEs to. And I can put the bookplates in the mail the next day so you can have them in plenty of time for whichever holiday it is you're celebrating.

As you see from my pictures, you have a choice -- the photo of moonrise, taken from my porch, or the tasteful border of violets, taken from the internet. Let me know which you would want.

So here's your chance to kill many birds (figuratively, of course) with one stone. Buy a new book for a friend -- support an author, give that friend a trip to the mountains (if you buy the right book.) Buy that book from a local independent bookseller -- support a valuable community asset!

NANNER PUDDIN’

Gilad works Pudding Magic.

In this part of the world, Banana Pudding is more properly called “Nanner Puddin’,” and it is more than a mere dessert. It is a Religion.

There are any number of ways to dessertify a banana. Those inclined to simplicity can simply peel and eat one, but if you crave something a bit more complicated, options abound.

You can slice up a banana and decorate each slice with a clump of peanut butter. Melted chocolate (milk or semisweet) is optional. You can use the banana as a base for a traditional banana split. You can mash bananas and convert them into Banana Nut Bread. You can toss ’em in a skillet with some butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, banana liqueur, and dark rum, cook ’em down, and dump the resulting mess onto vanilla ice cream. Presto: Bananas Foster!

I freakin’ love Bananas Foster.

But if you have even a drop of Southern blood in your veins, you will, first and foremost, think of Nanner Puddin’.

Traditionally, Nanner Puddin’ consists of a layered mixture of Nilla™ vanilla wafers, a vanilla pudding, and sliced ripe bananas, buried under a layer of meringue. Variations abound, some of them unfortunate (Paula Deen’s version, which includes cream cheese; and any recipe that involves prepackaged instant vanilla or banana pudding), some neutral, and some excellent.

When Gilad and the Mistress of Sarcasm were casting about for something to contribute to our Thanksgiving groaning board, they thought of the superb Nanner Puddin’ served at Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah. BitD makes their pudding in individual cups; they use whipped cream in lieu of meringue; and in place of the Nilla wafers, they use their own home-baked shortbread. The result is mind-bendingly good.


Shortbread layered with sliced bananas. The vanilla-flavored goop comes next.

Gilad ended up modifying a standard recipe by substituting shortbread chunks for the Nilla wafers, BitD-style. The result? A serious Calorie-Bomb: made-from-scratch vanilla pudding meets made-from-scratch shortbread meets yummy sliced bananas, all buried under a cloud of meringue...and then baked until golden. [An alternative version of the recipe (featuring Nilla wafers) is here.]

Holy Fuckamoley.

It’s the shortbread that elevates this dessert from the sublime to the ridiculously sublime. Shortbread, after all, is nothing but sweet butter, sugar, and a dab of salt...with just enough flour to hold it together in one clump when you bake it. Along with single malt whisky, it’s something for which we must be eternally grateful to the Scots.

If it were not for the fact that my ass expands simply by virtue of our having this stuff in the house, I would want to use this incredible recipe as a jumping-off point. Would the meringue be even better with a few crumbled amaretti cookies in it? Would adding a tablespoon or two of dark rum to the pudding kick the whole enterprise up a notch? Who knows? Anyone wanna find out?

THE LARCENOUS BAKER

Did you hear about the larcenous baker? They fired him from his job...

...for pinching a loaf at work.

TIME AND TEMPERATURE...

...convert the prosaic into the marvelous.



Three hours at 450˚F changed a twenty-pound bird into the crisp-skinned, succulent marvel you see here.

Here’s a baking sheet loaded with (most of) the various ingredients for Saveur magazine’s Roasted Cranberry Sauce. You have here cranberries, sugar, cloves, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, kosher salt, orange zest, olive oil...and a sliced-up jalapeño pepper.



After a mere fifteen minutes of 450˚F heat, that pile of raw materials has become something New and Different. And delicious.



Like everyone else, we have our Family Traditions. No Thanksgiving Day meal is complete without two - count ’em - kinds of canned Ocean Spray cranberry sauce: whole berry and jellied. There’s something about the way that stuff schhhhlurps out of the can in one solid, jellified, easily sliceable chunk that’s irresistible.

But we like to have a few Exotic Variations, too. For years, I’d make a cranberry-orange compote flavored with a shot of Cointreau...a nice change of pace. More recently, we have had peach-cranberry sauce (not bad) and blueberry chutney (excellent). The above Roasted Cranberry Sauce, with its many layers of flavors and its kick of hot pepper, is a welcome addition to our Palette o’ Cranberry-Related Condiments. Perhaps you will like it as well.

Hideout

Annie and I share several things in common.

Our love for the boys
and our escape plan.

She escapes below the desk, and I escape above it.

Join Camera Critters!!

How do you escape?
Do you write? Or Quilt? Or dive into a book or a workout routine?
Or do you lock yourself in the bathroom?

Mob Mentality

Black Friday, indeed.

The news story yesterday that a Long Island Wal Mart stock clerk had been knocked down and trampled to death by crowds breaking down the doors in their eagerness to save a few bucks is deeply disturbing.

I understand that for a lot of folks, hitting all the sales on the day after Thanksgiving is a kind of a sport -- scoring the latest electronic goodies at a big discount, getting a new TV that will cover a wall, loading up on all the trophies that make one an outstanding consumer. Others probably feel that it's their only chance to give their kids a Really Big Christmas -- the kind the TV commercials have them conditioned to expect.

For the merchants, especially in these dismal financial times, pre-Christmas sales may be the difference between solvency and Chapter 11.

But really -- a greed so overwhelming that people don't notice frail human flesh underfoot as they race for the plasma TVs?

Mob mentality -- a fever that takes hold and reduces a group to its lowest common denominator. It's frightening.

***

Later in the day, my spirits were lifted, I have to admit, when I received an email from a family member who shall be nameless, telling me that her husband had just served up some 'steaming bowels of turkey gumbo.'

Made me laugh out loud. If I'd been drinking coffee, it would have come out my nose.

FRIDAY RANDOM TEN - POST-THANKSGIVING EDITION

Today is Black Friday, the day when the Christmas shopping frenzy kicks into high gear and when merchants hope to pad their balance sheets. It is also Impacted Intestine Friday, when ol’ Mr. Turkey works his slow and painful way through the duodenum.

She Who Must Be Obeyed, the Mistress, and Gilad will no doubt be working to help the American economy in its recovery process, while I go out and smack the Little White Pill around the golf course. To those who deride the game of golf, saying that it is not exercise, I say “Nonsense.” It is too exercise. An exercise in frustration.

Meanwhile, the iPod d’Elisson awaits, with its Random Musical Spewage. Let’s listen...

1. I’m So Tired - The Beatles
   
   
2. Tande M Tande - Boukman Eksperyans
   
   
3. Woe-Is-uh-Me-Bop - Captain Beefheart
   
   
4. Tea for the Tillerman - Cat Stevens
   
   
5. The Mikado, Act II: There Is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast - D’Oyly Carte Opera Company
   
   KATISHA: There is beauty in the bellow of the blast,
   There is grandeur in the growling of the gale,
   There is eloquent outpouring
   When the lion is a-roaring,
   And the tiger is a-lashing of his tail!
   
   KO-KO: Yes, I like to see a tiger
   From the Congo or the Niger,
   And especially when lashing of his tail!
   
   KATISHA: Volcanoes have a splendor that is grim,
   And earthquakes only terrify the dolts,
   But to him who’s scientific
   There’s nothing that’s terrific
   In the falling of a flight of thunderbolts!
   
   KO-KO: Yes, in spite of all my meekness,
   If I have a little weakness,
   It’s a passion for a flight of thunderbolts!
   
   BOTH: If that is so,
   Sing derry down derry!
   It’s evident, very,
   Our tastes are one.
   Away we’ll go,
   And merrily marry,
   Nor tardily tarry
   Till day is done!
   
   KO-KO: There is beauty in extreme old age -
   Do you fancy you are elderly enough?
   Information I’m requesting
   On a subject interesting:
   Is a maiden all the better when she’s tough?
   
   KATISHA: Throughout this wide dominion
   It’s the general opinion
   That she’ll last a good deal longer when she’s tough.
   
   KO-KO: Are you old enough to marry, do you think?
   Won’t you wait till you are eighty in the shade?
   There’s a fascination frantic
   In a ruin that’s romantic;
   Do you think you are sufficiently decayed?
   
   KATISHA: To the matter that you mention
   I have given some attention,
   And I think I am sufficiently decayed.
   
   BOTH: If that is so,
   Sing derry down derry!
   It’s evident, very,
   Our tastes are one!
   Away we’ll go,
   And merrily marry,
   Nor tardily tarry
   Till day is done!
   
   
6. Stag-o-Lee - Professor Longhair
   
   
7. Bumblebee - Leo Kottke
   
   
8. Boys - The Beatles
   
   
9. Thunder Child - Jeff Wayne
   
   
10. Suzanne - Randy Newman
    
    

It’s Friday. What are you listening to?

FUZZY FRIDAY

For pointing this out,
Please don’t think me jerky:
The Ark’s complement
Is minus one Turkey.

Friday Ark #219 is afloat over at the Modulator. Don’t look for any turkeys there, though. The one that had been here at Chez Elisson since early in the week is now nestling snugly in my small intestine.

Lest we, in our tryptophan-induced lassitude, forget - the Carnival of the Cats, in its 246th incarnation, goes up Sunday evening at Nikita’s Place, AKA Musings of a Mad Macedonian. Don’t forget to stop by as you’re cleaning the last meat offa that turkey carcass!

Update: CotC #246 is up.

An Important Holiday

Sophie, (my French translator in Paris) sent good wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving and in her note said "I understand Thanksgiving is at least as important - if not more - than Christmas in the United States."

My initial reaction was something like, Oh, heavens, no -- in the US, Christmas isn't just a day but a season that extends for some folks from the day after Thanksgiving to New Year's Day with gifts and church and Christmas carols and cards and parties and traditional events like The Nutcracker, and decorations that can range from a simple wreath on the door to decorated trees in every room and twinkling reindeer on the lawn.

Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is just one day -- lots of cooking, lots of eating -- how could it approach the importance of Christmas?

But in talking with some of the folks gathered at our house today, I came to realize that it's all the things that Thanksgiving lacks that makes it such a pure holiday and one almost immune to commercialization.

For us, it's simply a day to be thankful and to enjoy the company of family and friends -- no gifts, no cards, no pre-or post Thanksgiving parties. The stores don't play Thanksgiving Muzak at you (even if there were a canon of Turkey Day tunes, the stores are already playing Christmas ditties.)

So we shove the furniture around and rely on sawhorses and an old door to make a table big enough for all of us; we prepare and eat far too much food; drink a pleasant amount of wine; and enjoy being together for a long afternoon -- a kind of low key warm-up for the demands of the coming Christmas season.

Let's Trade

I've posted about our local Trade Days before.
The first time I went by myself and saw what all there was available.
The second time I took the boys, and we barely made it out without one of these.

Well, here are more photos from that second trip with the boys.
It was their first time to experience a Trade Days.
And they loved it.

This is Third Monday Trade Days.

I seriously contemplated buying one of these bird houses.

The one in the middle was my favorite.

Here's Remy showing me that if he were a bird and this was his house,
that's the room he'd want to be his.
Do you remember doing stuff like that when you were a child?
I do.

I was SO tempted to buy that bird house.

I was not tempted to buy these purses below...

But, I was tempted to buy these metal creatures...

and these too. They're so creative and hilarious!

I wasn't too tempted to buy these chickens though...although at some point I'd love to have some to produce fresh eggs for my family...

I was very tempted to buy these adorable little potbellies.
I've told you about my pet pig Kory, the potbelly I had in high school, right?

I swear, I didn't buy this, but somehow it ended up in my car

This is what he bought...a real stainless steel sword.

That he used to cut the tree, causing his mother to yell at him in horror!

and which he has now hidden from his dangerous little brother.

Speaking of the little brother, he was so inspired by Trade Days that he decided to create something of his own to try and sell, just like the people at the market...

It's probably best it only happens once a month, or I'd be tempted to go often!

Do you have a local trade market? Have you ever bought or sold something at one of these? Did anything in these pictures temp you?

Are you shopping today?

PERCEPTUAL ACCELERATION

As I sit here digesting a magnificent Turkey Dinner, it occurs to me that it seems like only yesterday that it was last Thanksgiving.

Intellectually, I know that there has been a year’s worth of water under the Bridge o’ Life. Emotionally, it seems like mere minutes.

I often say that time flies when you’re having fun, and even when you’re not...and the speed of that flight increases with every passing year. For it is a cruel fact of nature that as one gets older, life seems to speed up.

I call it Elisson’s Law of Proportional Perception. As we age, each year is a smaller fraction of our lifespan; thus, over time, the years seem to shrink, diminishing in apparent length a little bit every trip around the Sun.

It’s a cruel trick of nature. The less time we have left on the planet, the faster it seems to go. When you’re circling the drain, each orbit is more rapid than the one that preceded it...and that drain gets closer and closer.

But enough depressing musing. We’ve had a Big Feed, our collective kishkes are extracting buttloads of tryptophan from all that Turkedelic Protein, and the ladies are already planning the morrow’s shopping expeditions (gaaahhhh). It has been a wonderful day...and had Elder Daughter been here, it would have been perfect.

I hope your Thanksgiving was at least as enjoyable.

LOOK OUT

Hey! Did anybody else just see a really large bird?

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone !

Up early to get the turkey in the oven. Below is our projected menu.

THANKSGIVING 2008
Noon if you want to listen to Alice’s Restaurant. Noon-thirty if you don’t

VICKI
Cream cheese w/smoked salmon and crackers
Turkey, dressing, gravy,
Ba's cranberry gelatin salad

AILEEN
Apple pies and the famous homemade cinnamon ice cream
Sweet potatoes
Appetizer?

CLAUI
Pomegranate/ squash/ arugula salad
Mashed Potatoes
Apple Cider

NANCY L.
Fig chutney/Cotswold cheese/pickled onions/hearty bread tray
Rolls

LOUISE
Tapenade and super-seeded crackers
Green salad,
Inflamed parsley sauce(a pesto),
Pear and cranberry chutney (salsa).
Green beans

NAOMI
Vegetable platter

This is what's on the menu at our house. -- all these good women pitching in to make a feast.
There'll be fourteen of us at the table and we'll be giving thanks for family and friends.

May your Thanksgiving be full of good things -- and my heartfelt thanks to all of you for your friendship. You are among my blessings.