A Great Start to the New Year

What makes for a perfect start to the New Year? I used to think it was a hot date, a reservation at a fun party spot, a fancy dress and lots of champagne. Now I’m less interested in being on the roads with other people of poor judgment.

Since I left the high-tech corporate world to focus on writing and fiber art, I am aware of a more natural eddy and flow to life. I still have hard charging weeks when I am struggling to make a deadline or complete a project, but I no longer suffer withdrawal pains if I don’t get on an airplane for three weeks.

Anyway, I have decided that the only thing about my old New Years equation that is right is the champagne. New Years for me has become a few days to get away, relax, and recharge. And, I have found the perfect place to do it.

For the past three years, our good friends have invited us to their mountain house in North Georgia. Yes, I know these are just foothills and not real mountains, but indulge me. There is enough hill and dale to let you know you’ve had some exercise when you go for a walk, and there are wild things in the woods. The only sound at night is the water tumbling down the hill, the occasional hunting owl, and the crackle of the fires (one in the great room, one out on the screened porch, and one down below in the outdoor fire pit).

That’s the setting. Next comes a good mix of people. This year we had four couples ranging in age from twenty something to fifty something, plus one delightful five-year-old, and four dogs. Our backgrounds ranged from aspiring animated movie maker to banker, with all sharing a broad appreciation for the good things in life – movies, music, food, beer, wine, whiskey, and good conversation. Oh, yes. And college football.

Add in a little entertainment including a marathon game of Phase Ten, a few rounds of dominos and quiddler, and you have the start of a truly relaxing weekend. Along with a bloody mary or mimosas every morning, we were treated to some great food. We opened our eyes to an amazing sausage frittata and fresh pears, as well as Amaretto French toast to make you moan. We warmed ourselves with great bowls of Southwestern Soup, and ate traditional black-eyed peas, collards, and pulled pork for the New Years Day feast.

In between, we noshed on an amazing array of appetizers. Caviar and sour cream on boiled new potatoes, steak and lobster on a stick, gooey brie in hot pastry and pancetta and cheese pinwheels hot from the oven. My own contributions were simple, but a couple of recipes were requested and so I’ve reproduced them for you here.

I hope they will inspire you to gather your best and most interesting friends around you to enjoy a weekend or a meal. In my opinion, nothing beats it for a great way to spend your time away from the desk.

Chocolate Stout Cake (serves at least 12)

Ingredients for cake
2 cups stout -- such as Guinness
2 cups butter, unsalted
1 ½ cups unsweetened cocoa powder
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons salt
4 large eggs
1 ⅓ cups sour cream

Ingredients for icing
2 cups whipping cream
1 pound bittersweet chocolate -- chopped

Directions for cake:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter three 8-inch round cake pans with 2-inch-high sides. Line pans with parchment paper and butter the paper (or just line the pans with waxed paper as my mother used to do).
Bring 2 cups stout and 2 cups butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Remove from heat and cool slightly.
Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in large bowl to blend. Set aside.
Using an electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream to blend. Add stout chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat to combine. Slowly add flour mixture and beat briefly, then use spatula, folding batter to combine completely.
Divide batter equally among the prepared pans. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean (about 35 minutes). Transfer cakes to rack to cool for 10 minutes. Remove cakes from pans and cool completely on racks.

Directions for icing:
Bring cream to simmer in heavy medium saucepan. Remove from heat. Add chopped chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Refrigerate icing until it cools enough to be spreadable, stirring occasionally (about 2 hours).
Place one cake layer on plate. Spread 2/3 cup icing over the top. Top with second layer of cake. Spread with 2/3 cup icing. Top with third layer and spread remaining icing over top and sides.

Cover and keep at room temperature. Slice and serve with vanilla ice cream.

Chopped Salad (serves 8-10 as side salad)

Ingredients for Salad
4 cups romaine lettuce -- chopped
1 large tomato -- chopped
1 tablespoon capers
¼ cup feta cheese -- crumbled
¼ cup Olives, Kalamata -- pitted and chopped
1 medium cucumber -- peeled, chopped (remove seeds before chopping)
4 ounces chickpeas, canned

Ingredients for Vinaigrette
2 tablespoons onion -- minced
1 teaspoon garlic -- minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ medium lemon -- juiced
splash white wine vinegar
salt and pepper -- to taste

Directions: Assemble salad. Dress with vinaigrette and serve immediately.

Gingerbread Pancakes (serves 4-6)

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup dark brown sugar -- packed
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon -- ground
1 teaspoon ginger -- ground
¼ teaspoon nutmeg -- ground
⅛ teaspoon cloves -- ground
½ cup water
½ cup coffee -- room temperature
4 large eggs
½ cup butter, unsalted -- melted and cooled
¼ cup lemon juice -- freshly squeezed

Heat griddle and spray with cooking oil. Warm oven to lowest temperature.

Whisk together dry ingredients. Whisk together wet ingredients. Combine and let stand 15 minutes (batter will thicken).

Pour 1/4 cup batter onto griddle and cook until bubbles appear on surface and undersides are lightly browned (1 to 2 minutes). Flip pancakes and cook until cooked through and edges are lightly browned (1 to 2 minutes more). Transfer to platter and keep warm in oven.

Serve with butter, maple syrup and whipped cream.

Note: just in case you were wondering, a little whipped cream never hurt the dog.

Toward a Better Blog

Let’s keep it real. We all dream of saving the world while knowing that we have trouble managing one tiny corner of the blogosphere. (Hmmm… corner? sphere? That can’t be right). At any rate, I’ve been thinking about the blog that I started in September and looking for ways to improve it (in addition to more content, better writing, and more promotion, of course).

The good news is that I’ve shown up pretty late for the party, so there are lots of good bloggers out there, and being who they are, they have written about it on the internet. The collective wisdom seems to be that, unless you are already a celebrity of one breed or another and the masses hang on every word you utter, a blog needs to target a specific audience.

As you might have noticed from my initial posts, I’m all over the place. Professionally I’m a non-fiction writer, so the writer’s life is of interest to me. However, the topics I write about range from native plants to dogs to all sorts of needlecrafts – not because these topics are randomly assigned, but because these are the things that interest me.

Naturally, I don’t write these articles for one publication. They each have a different target audience. Thinking that through was a bit of a light bulb moment for me. Ok maybe it was a slap the forehead, duh moment, but the result is this. Over the next few weeks, I will be launching and posting new content to several new blogs each focused on one of my areas of interest.

Native in the City will provide information about the value and use of native plants in gardening. I have already written many articles on this topic for regional publications targeting gardeners and landscape professionals.

Dog Dialogue will include articles and stories about dogs – their care and training, reviews of products and books and the biased opinions of Lady’s mom (me).

Stitching Times will offer stories and examples of a wide variety of needle oriented crafts using fabric, yarn, threads, beads and found things. These will be from my own catalog and from friends (actual and virtual). It will also provide a venue to gather input for my upcoming series of books called The Home Sewer’s Reference.

Contrarian Chronicles will provide information and opinions on topics local and global – some politics, some social commentary, and all targeted at a fairly broad front page audience. Hopefully this blog will generate some meaningful discussion without starting flame wars.

And finally, Ink Slinger Chronicles will become a place to write about writing and hear from others how they are living the writer’s life.

I may not post as often to any one blog, but readers will be better able to pick and choose which spot to watch. Hopefully we share some interests and you will let me hear from you.

What would we do without George Will?

As a former Lit major and sometime writer, I read a lot. I read books mostly, but also newspapers and magazine articles – especially those that I can read online, or that others send to me via e-mail. My husband is a great clipping service sending me links to articles he thinks might interest me. This is how I started reading George Will’s columns.
I knew of George Will before that. I was devoted to “This Week with David Brinkley”. This was a show I considered one of the last truly civil news programs on television. I use civil in the sense of “adhering to the norms of polite social intercourse; not deficient in common courtesy”. Brinkley was always in charge of the discussion and made sure that all voices were heard. This is so unlike the current style of such programs, which seems to encourage one pundit to out-shout the other guests on the program. Apparently, the current thinking is that the loudest and rudest pundit wins. The “This Week” program went downhill in this regard under the helm of Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts and is only now approaching something I can stand to watch under the guidance of George Stephanopoulos. But I digress.
George Will restores my faith in the thinking man (or woman). He is smart and well read, articulate, and fearless. Reading his articles, or listening to him on television I often think, “I wish I could convince everyone I know to listen to this guy.” He just makes sense. It often seems to me that he is pointing out the obvious, but listening to the rest of the media – even those who sit next to him at the roundtable – it is clear that the facts and conclusions he offers up are not obvious to everyone.
Here is yet another article that I read this morning. An Inconvenient Price begs the question of what we should be doing about global warming, if anything. My poor husband has been listening to me rant in a far less articulate manner along similar lines.
It is clear to me that it is foolhardy to put too much faith in man’s ability to control the environment. Can we make a problem marginally worse? Sure. At least we can do so on a local level as happens when someone dumps enough bad chemicals into a river that provides the drinking water for a large city downstream.
Can this kind of environmental impact be stopped? Again, sure. But if you really believe that man can control the environment, take a look at Bill Bryson’s book “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. Read Chapter 15 about Yellowstone National Park.
It seems that Yellowstone is a super volcano. Not some geological relic only of interest to professors at small western universities, but an active volcano with the potential to exert a force thousands of times more powerful than the eruption at Mount St. Helens. And we are about 30,000 years overdue for the next eruption.
When it happens, the ash alone could be enough to halt the production of food in all states west of the Mississippi. The rate of species extinction caused by such an event just makes the current climate change debate sound silly. The last super volcano eruption happened seventy four thousand years ago and brought our race to the brink of extinction. Never mind the polar bear.
So what would we do without a voice of reason like George F. Will? I guess that for most folks we know the answer. We would have devoted yesterday’s writing time to “Blog Action Day” and written many possibly silly articles about the environment and our efforts to control it.