Synopsis Stuff

After a reply Tweet from a friend, I realized something big has changed:

I'm no longer afraid of writing synopses.

This might be because I've written seven in the last year, at least.  After about two or three, my attitude changed.  I started worrying less and focused more on "knocking it out," telling myself I'd change things later.

You know, like you're supposed to when writing.

So there you go.  My success tip for synopses.  Write them really fast.  Don't overthink them - all you need is to basically sketch out how the book follows a basic three-act structure.  Don't worry about all of the crucial information you're leaving out (hint: you'd be surprised how much you don't really need).  Don't worry about going to long or two short.

And remind yourself that everything - especially the book you're summarizing - can be changed.  Just because something is in your synopsis, doesn't mean it has to be in the book.

The caveat to that is that the synopsis is what your publisher uses to write catalogue copy, possibly before you're done.  So if you change things up, let them know.  I was waffling about whether or not Sara went to visit her sister Rebecca for a while.  The catalogue release sewed that one up.

So there you go. Happy synopsis writing!

The Panini Post

I've written about my lunch-related angst before. At long last, I seem to have made a breakthrough.

Hello Panini.  Let's be friends.

Paninis solve several problems.  First, the bread is grilled, so you're unlikely to get icky bits of bread stuck in your teeth, which I hate.  Also, the grilling is pretty forgiving. You can use somewhat stale-ish bread, and it's okay.

I mean, I wouldn't serve it that way if I ran a restaurant.  But this is me, in my kitchen, at lunchtime.  I'm good with stale-ish bread.

Also, there is almost always cheese.  I love cheese.

And the pressing method warms the sandwich through, so you can put all sorts of veggies inside (ones more nutritious, say, than the requisite lettuce leaf).

Did I mention there are hundreds of variations?  This one is a variation on one of my signature sandwiches (I used ham and provolone instead of prosciutto and fontina), and I'm dying to try this one (with less bread, though, the one pictured is a bit overwhelming.

What's also great is that Danny enjoys them too.  We had dinner at Frost Me Sweet here in Richland, and while he was a bit wary going in (the seafoam green exterior paint and girly writing on the sign doesn't really connote manfood within), their Italian panini won him over.

Also, they had french fries.

But back to the panini.  It's pepperoni, salami, prosciutto, mozzarella and marinara sauce - very approachable for the red-blooded American male.  Also very easy to recreate at home.

(Side note - the salted caramel cupcake at Frost Me Sweet? Very good.)

So we bought a panini press.  You can spend a lot of money on them (one at TJ Maxx was going for $80), but I opted for the Hamilton Beach model.  Large enough to accommodate two sandwiches, a nice swivel-y top (so the top presses straight down, not from an awkward acute angle), but not particularly expensive.  Also, fits nicely on top of our mini-convection oven.

Here are some panini ideas in case you're feeling adventurous...

~ Southwestern (kind of) Panini ~

Inspired by the one at Starbucks, not available in Tri-Cities or the city of Memphis.

Flatbread if you have it, ciabatta, or sliced sourdough if you don't

Salsa

Sour Cream (I use light)

Monterey Jack cheese

Deli roasted chicken

Red and green bell peppers

Olive oil

Brush the outer slices of bread (i.e. the bread that will wind up on the outside) with olive oil, or spray if you have a spritzer or Pam-type olive oil spray), lay out on cutting board.  Mix the salsa with the sour cream in equal portions, spread onto bread.  Add some cheese to one side, then chicken, peppers, and more cheese on top (helps everything to stick together).  Grill until golden.

Note: Cheese will ooze.  Lost cheese is sad, so keep your cheese towards the middle.  Don't worry, it'll spread to the edges on its own.

~ Pear and Brie Panini ~

Inspired by a sandwich at Cafe Eclectic, by far one of the best places to eat (sans BBQ) in Memphis.

Brie

Thin-sliced Ripe Pear

Ciabatta Bread

Honey

Honey-Dijon mustard (optional)

Arugula

Slice Ciabatta in half, hollow it out a bit.  Feed the leftover bits of bread to the dog.  Brush the outsides with olive oil.  Mix some mustard and the honey together in a very small container (measuring cup works well), spread onto inside of bread.  Stack thin-sliced brie, pear, and arugula on the inside.  Press until golden and the brie is completely melted.

~ Italian Panini ~

Bread of Choice (sliced sourdough, ciabatta, Italian - really can't go wrong here)

Pizza sauce of choice (I like Boboli; use a pizza sauce rather than jarred marinara - less watery, less likely to soak the bread and get grossly soggy on the inside.  Which isn't what happened at Frost Me Sweet, but has happened elsewhere)

Salami of choice (I use Genoa)

Prosciutto

Pepperoni (I decline, but Danny likes it)

Roasted Red Peppers (optional)

Arugula (optional)

Mozarella cheese (aged or fresh)

Spray/brush bread with olive oil.  Stack ingredients. Cook. Enjoy.

~ Sweet Potato Fries ~

Partly inspired by Frost Me Sweet, who bake their fries with minced garlic, parsley, and shaved Parmesan cheese, and partly inspired by the idea that sweet potato fries are better for you but not quite *there* yet.

Frozen Sweet Potato Fries (make your own fresh and fry them yourself, but this is faster. This is lunch, people)

Fresh Rosemary

Fresh OR freeze-dried (thank you, Lighthouse!) Parsley

Olive Oil

Garlic, minced

Sea Salt

Fresh Cracked Pepper

Parmesan, grated or shaved

Pour some olive oil into a medium-ish bowl.  Add spices and garlic, let them sit for a few minutes to infuse a bit.  Toss in frozen fries, throw them around with your hands until they're adequately coated. Dump them onto a foil-lined pan; top with sea salt and a couple twists of cracked pepper.  Bake according to the package instructions.  Top with cheese once they're out of the oven; serve when cheese has melted.

Those are my food obsessions - what are you eating and enjoying right now?

BTW, booked my hotel room for ACFW. Who all is St. Louis-bound?

Maybe Later

So, I've tried to write a blog about characters for two days now.

That dog just won't hunt.

This one won't either.  She's a herder, not a hunter.

She also likes tulips.

And naps with Danny.

Baths? Not so much.

Peanut butter?  Yes, ma'am.

Black Heels and a Book Contest

So, a long time ago (February), in a far away land (Memphis), I attended a very large, very cool book signing at the Davis-Kidd Bookstore.

The business has since been auctioned off, but I'm VERY glad I got to be here, the night before we left to return for the Northwest.

Who was the author? None other than The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond!

Though in reality, it took some work to get to the point where you could actually see her.  You know who was easier to find?

A slightly iconic figure of the blogosphere...

...whom we usually see frowning at cows or covered in dirt.  Or cow poop.  Or...let's just be honest, from the back.  Not only was he clean and posing for picture, but he signed books!

It was very impressive.  Danny was in awe, since my book signings cause him conflicting desires; to be wildly proud of his wife vs. staying as far out of the fray as humanly possible.

After a not-short wait in line (which turned out to be longer because the line system was a bit confusing, and I was VERY glad I'd worn flats rather than heels, because I wouldn't have wanted to be in tears by the time I got to the front of the line), I made it to the lovely P-Dub...

...who graciously signed the stack of books I'd brought her.  Bless her.  And bless Danny for shooting the picture for me. Did I mention he was there with me through the craziness the whole time? Aside from when he had to make an emergency Best Buy (or was it Office Max?) run when I realized I'd forgotten the memory card for my camera (again.  I'm going to chalk it up to the going-crazy-packing-to-drive-across-the-country-brain).

He's quite grand, my husband.

The other funny part of that whole experience is that the girl in line in front of us was not only on her cell phone, but she stayed on her cell phone when she took her books to Ree and in fact passed the phone to her, asking her to speak to the person on the other end of the line.

For the record, a.) PW handled it very graciously, b.) I would not personally encourage this behavior, and c.) if a reader did that to me at a book signing, I can't even imagine what awkward thing I would say.  But I thought it hysterically funny.  What *did* people do before cell phones?

Anyway, I have a copy of this book...

(Which Tesla, an avid reader, recommends very much. And this picture was taken with my phone, so don't judge.)

...signed by both Ree and Marlboro Man, whose real name (for those interested) is Ladd Drummond.  This book has been lovingly transported across the country, protected from the elements, and has been hanging out in my closet (until just recently, when I made the dog pose with it) until I could get my electronic act together (more on that later).

Black Heels to Tractor Wheels is the story of how Ree and Ladd met, fell in love, and married.  If you've read the blog account (as I had), rest assured that there are parts not in the blog, and also tells the story about  their crazy Australian honeymoon and the birth of their first girl-child.  Also, if you're familiar with her recipes, gives a bit of history around some of her favorite foods and how they came to be.

If you'd like to win the copy, here's what to do:

1.) Comment below and answer the following question: What food means love to you?

2.) Hit the "Like" button on my Hillary Manton Lodge Fiction page on Facebook...

or...

3.) Follow me on Twitter

or

4.) Hit the "Follow" button to the right of this blog.

If you're already following, liking, Twittering, what-have-you, then all you have to do is comment, the other part is automatic.  The winner will be chosen at random.  Good luck!

Back From Hiatus

Didn't exactly *mean* to go on hiatus, but that's what happened.  Since the last post, we've...

1.) Driven across the country
2.) Visited friends and family at home VERY quickly
3.) Gathered our somewhat-in-storage belongings from various family members (four homes in total, bless them)
4.) Drove northeast with family to Richland, WA, our new home, and moved into our
5.) Glorious corporate apartment, which is fabulously amazing (especially after the...um...less than ideal hotel room we'd survived for the previous three months.)

I can wax about the apartment.  It has a mostly full kitchen, complete with a real oven and a real dishwasher and a real garbage disposal, which means I don't have to flush scraps down the toilet anymore.

If that grosses you out, you can either a.) know that the toilet was only six feet away, so this was actually a very convenient solution, or b.) pretend I didn't write it.  Whatever works for you, I'm good with it.

Anyway, we also have a second bedroom, AND a second bathroom (which is great for the after-church bathroom rush, you know?), and there are walls and doors and - oh yeah - CENTRAL AIR, and a fireplace...

...the only thing that could make it more magical would be a unicorn on the patio.  Which the dog would probably bark at.

Also a little more counter space.  But it's fantastic for now.

What else?

6.) The dog - we got a puppy.  And in all honesty, this is probably one of the biggest reasons I've been on hiatus.  Because she's less of a puppy than she is a 7-month-old infant who bit and peed and ran circles around things and caused me to cry and wonder why I'd spent three years desperately wanting a puppy.

Then, because she's full of much wisdom, she would choose that particular moment to curl up in my lap and sleep.

This caused two reactions.  First, I didn't give her away.  Secondly, I went to sleep myself.  Since those first few weeks, Tesla has a.) house-trained, save the evening accident, b.) kennel-trained, c.) learned to sit, d.) learned to lay down, e.) learned to drop (when it suits her), f.)  learned to roll over, and most importantly, g.) figured out that nipping lands her in jail (aka kitchen), and that licking people's hands instead grants her far more positive attention.

However, she's yet to figure out that a bath has yet to lead to her imminent demise.  Oh well.

So things, at this stage, are good.  We love the puppy.  The puppy loves us.  It was just a bit rocky there for a while, especially on four hours of sleep.

But wait, there's more!

7.) We put in an offer on a house.  After a long, protracted amount of back-and-forthing, we
8.) Decided to build in a neighborhood with easy access to the Barnhart yard for Danny, and easy access to Target and Starbucks for me.
9.)We've since picked out our exterior paint as well as our counter tops, despite the presence of walls or counter tops.

But enough about us.  How about the rest of the world?! The Royal Wedding-pocalypse came and...kind of went.  Kind of, in that it isn't dominating all of the media, but there's still plenty of coverage concerning Pippa's date and the going-away clothes and the timing of the honeymoon...

And let's be honest.  We know the pregnancy speculation is right around the corner.  It's like a Presidential campaign - you know it's coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.  If I were Kate, I'd invest in some industrial-strength level Spanx.  Though she is impressively svelte as is, you know that the moment she exhales the wrong way, that photo's going viral in a mater of seconds.

That's just my two cents.

And while the world was engrossed in said wedding, a super-secret-don't-tell-ANYONE-especially-not-People-Magazine SEAL team (who used to be referred to as Team 6, but after the press coverage, they've probably changed their name to Team 8 or something, to keep things top secret) struck in Pakistan, killing Osama bin Laden in a fire fight, thoroughly confirming the identity of the body before burying it at sea.

While I'm glad the search is over, I do have mixed feelings on this.  I wish bin Laden could have been tried for his crimes.  I wish another death wasn't necessary.  I wish we didn't live in a fallen world. It's interesting seeing the reactions of others, from measured dread to jubilation. I think this C.S. Lewis quote sums up a Godly response nicely - "We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy hating. We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy it."

On a lighter note...

A few days ago, Tesla picked up her water dish (my 5-inch Corningware dish) with her mouth from its place on the carpet to the tile by the fireplace, where she dropped it for no reason but noise.  Now, it's Corningware, so it's nearly indestructible (I say nearly, because I broke one at a Target once), but the overall effect was reminiscent of the clanging of a beer stein and yelling for the barkeep.

Glad to be back! Be sure to check in in the comments section down below.

Oh! And to kick off my return to the blogging world, I'll be doing my first-ever contest.  And let me tell you, it's cool.  So stay tuned!

Lemon Tartlets in a Small Kitchen

Isn't it pretty? I used the recipe (both the filling and the crust) from the Smitten Kitchen recipe.  With...well...subtle changes.

I decreased the butter in the filling by one tablespoon, mainly because I had one stick short of a tablespoon in the fridge and decided that would have to be enough (don't think that I'm stingy on butter.  I'm not.  This recipe is not short of butter!).

Also, I don't exactly quite have a food processor.  I have a food processing attachment that goes with our immersion blender, which works great, but only ever holds about a cup or so of anything.  So I processed in smaller portions, mixed, processed some more, at least with the filling.  I did the crust by hand.  I realized that my pastry cutter (among many other things) is in storage, and cutting the butter in with knives wasn't floating my boat, so I rubbed the butter in with my (clean) fingers.  Mary Englebreit got me onto that, and sometimes it's quite handy.


Discovered (belatedly) that it would have been easier to simply press the chilled dough into the tartlet pans, rather than try to roll it out using my can of Baker's Joy.  I was afraid of overworking the dough, but as a result of not whaling on it, the crust was thicker than I intended.

But it tasted good.

The tartlet shells did shrink up just the tiniest but, but it actually made it easier to remove from the pan.

As for the lemon filling, it set up without any problems.  However, I actually think I'll use a regular lemon next time with the zest of a second lemon (as opposed to one Meyer Lemon).  Or maybe one Meyer Lemon and the zest of a regular lemon.

Anyway, not as sit up, hold the phone lemony as I wanted it to  be, so I'll tweak that for next time.  And don't get me wrong - there's definitely going to be a next time!

Cooking in a tiny hotel kitchen-let is not for the faint of heart (or specifically for the faint of heart, the kind who order take out all the time.  It can go either way).  With two burners (and one saucepan), it really forces me to streamline the prep process for anything I'm making.  But its been a good exercise in using things creatively.  Rather than sauté veggies every time, I may roast them in the mini-convection oven (which has proved its worth, btw) so I can use that second burner for something else.  If I'm making a brown-butter sage sauce, I skip the browning and melt the butter with the sage in the microwave.  Is it purist cooking? No, but it works.

Though sometimes, it's easier to order Thai.