A Million Words

For the past month, I've been keeping track of my grocery spending by keeping receipts and writing down any miscellaneous expenses like market purchases and take-away meals. Yesterday, I tallied it all up and found that we've been spending a bit less than €150/week.  I'd hoped it would be more like €100. Oh well.  I wondered how this compared to what other people spend, so I posted a poll on one of the Irish forums.  44% of the respondents (over 100 so far!) claim to spend in the 100-150 range.23% spend less and 30% spend more.  I don't know the demographics of the respondents, but I'd guess that most of them are stay-at-home mums, and because they're looking at the finance forum they're probably more budget-conscious than average.  In the discussion of the poll, I learned that some women with six or more children spend less than we do, while I'm sure some couples with only one child spend even more.   Am I over-spending, or are we doing just fine?  I do...

For my February "good novel" I chose to read Oliver Twist , a classic which is more often quoted than read.  I learned just now that it was Dickens's second novel. I have also read Great Expectations and Tale of Two Cities, and it's clear that Dickens wasn't at the height of his craft with Oliver Twist.  I found it slow going in parts, and was occasionally annoyed by the young Dickens's tendency towards melodrama.  Still, the characters were memorable (if not multi-faceted) and there were moments of brilliance, particularly his descriptions of London and one chapter close to the end, entitled "The Flight of Sikes." I chose to read Oliver Twist largely because I thought it would help me with two of my own writing projects, a romance set in roughly the same time period and a fantasy novel which features a cadre of young thieves.  It certainly helped me see areas in which those stories need work, but for the most part I'm just glad to have finally g...

I have been sinking altogether too much creative energy into cooking lately.  The past week featured pancakes for Shrove Tuesday, a re-heated lasagne, a not-very-good aloo gobi, and finally a " Shortcut Pork Cassoulet " which we brought up to my mother-in-law's for dinner on Friday night. Cassoulet is a big project, even the shortcut version.  I would really like to do a full old-fashioned version, but I wasn't sure where to get duck confit and I wasn't ready to make it without being assured of a very appreciative audience at the end of the process. I would make it again, but only in cold weather, with a lot of guests, and using a slightly bigger casserole dish.  It didn't make me homesick, exactly, but it did make me wish for a better-equipped kitchen.   Last night I made Irish Beef Stew and One Hour Shrimp Paella .  The paella was a bit of a disappointment.  I used basmati rice instead of arborio, which didn't do the texture any favors, and got the cook...

Last night, Mike came home thinking that it was Pancake Tuesday, which is what they have in Ireland instead of Mardi Gras.  He asked if we could have pancakes for dinner just as I was rolling out the pizza dough (I tried to spin and stretch it out the first few times, but I've switched to rolling lately).  I felt bad about missing the opportunity to participate in an important cultural observance. The good news is, yesterday wasn't  Shrove Tuesday.  The big day is next week, so I have plenty of time to prepare and stock up on eggs.   As a result of this pancake scare, I just spent about an hour looking at pancake recipes on epicurious.com.  I wonder, is this too obsessive?  Have I gone over into the dark side of competitive housewifery?  Will I suddenly take out a subscription to Martha Stewart Magazine ?  Shouldn't I be writing instead?   But just think of the food that could be made!  I want to make Turkish Zucchini Pancakes and Buckwheat Pancakes with Smoked Salmon in ...

I wouldn't say that I have writers' block, it's just that I'm having a hard time getting back into things.   November was a very intense and stressful month at our place, but I still managed to crank out just over 50,000 words of a rough draft of a novel in those thirty days, along with a grant application.  It was really too much. In December, I made myself unnecessarily busy with holiday baking and things, and I'd just begun to recover from all that when my hard drive died beyond hope of recovery on January 11th. I'd backed up most of my work, but not all of it, and not often enough.   I've had my computer back for two weeks now and have reconstructed what I could, but I still haven't gotten back to work in earnest. I had planned to finish the rough draft of my NaNoWriMo novel, but I lost my scene list and besides I've been away from it for too long to just pick up where I left off.  Instead, I decided to re-work what I have already. I've gotte...

I made a small New Year's resolution:  to read at least one good novel every month.  Last year was not a good year for reading, for me.  The first half of the year was simply chaotic, with a transatlantic move, living with a whole lot of other people, looking after a very young baby, getting married, and wrapping up loose ends from years past.  I read less than two books in those six months, South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami, and the later parts of What's Going on in There , which I'd started reading in November or December. 2009 is getting off on a better foot.  For a while, I've been wanting to read The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. I had heard that it was good. The first fifty pages or so were fantastic, and the author's world-building is awe-inspiring, but as the story wore on I started to get bored.  By page 200, he hadn't even introduced the main antagonist, and I was so thoroughly bored by the cleverness of it all that I clo...

I haven't done a lick of writing since the beginning of December, being consumed by the usual holiday busy-ness plus an ambitious succession of crafts and baking projects.   At the beginning of the month, I used the leftover fabric from my baby-carrier making to make bags for my mother, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law, plus a few small ones to wrap cookies in because the only tins I could find cost about 8 euro a pop.   For Mike's relatives over in Ireland I made the following: Aunt Big's Gingersnaps,  an old stand-by of mine, and two recipes that were new to me, Rugelach and Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies .  The rugelach I will definitely make again, despite the fact that it was a two-day process with a bit of fiddling.  The candy cane cookies were very yummy, but it is next to impossible to find striped peppermint candies in Ireland, even three weeks before Christmas, and I found the peppermint filling a bit much. The chocolate cookie part, however, was delicious. Then I ...