A few pictures, no words
Why was it so important?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There’s a literary connection as well a the computer science one.
Month: November 2015
From the Tooth.
Altitude
Lola Ridge, 1873
I wonder
how it would be here with you,
where the wind
that has shaken off its dust in low valleys
touches one cleanly,
as with a new-washed hand,
and pain
is as the remote hunger of droning things,
and anger
but a little silence
sinking into the great silence.
Sunset from the Tooth of Time (c) 2009 R. Harrison
A Quick Chicken Pie.
This is a surprisingly simple recipe that works both on the stove top, and even more amazingly, with period cooking gear, and completely unbelievably with tenderfoot/webelos scouts (did I ever mention I’m a scout leader and adult trainer?).
I’m going to give two variations, the “fail safe” one that you can eat uncooked, and the somewhat nicer one that you can cook when you know what you’re doing.
The recipe
fail safe
- one or two onions, cut up
- two or three carrots, cut thin
Saute, what the heck, fry until they start to brown. Use oil in the bottom of your dutch oven. (Hint, dutch ovens can sit on a camp stove. ‘Nuff said.)
Pour in:
- two cans condensed cream of chicken soup. Plus the water they need.
- two cans precooked chicken (pouches are nice too).
- a grasshopper and some wood ash (not really)
Cover with an unrolled package of crescent rolls. Bake until the rolls are done and the soup is bubbling.
The Right Way
- one or two onions, cut up
- two or three carrots, cut thin
Saute, what the heck, fry until they start to brown. Remove from the heat and add 3 cutup chicken breasts (or as they would have said in Victorian times, ‘white meat’).
Cook the meat until the until it’s more or less done. There will be a surprising amount of water coming out of the meat, and you want to get shot of it. When it’s nearly done, return the onions and carrots, add about 1 cup of chicken stock and a tablespoon of corn starch. Boil to reduce. Then put in a baking dish – or dutch oven, but I’m going to show a picture in a baking dish.
Crust
You could use the crescent rolls, but where’s the fun in that?
- One cup ‘type L’ biscuit mix (self-rising flour with a hard shortening rubbed in)
- quarter cup (more or less) milk.
Mix then roll out to about 1/4 inch. Or whatever it takes to make it cover the dish. Cover the filling and bake. (400F or 225C 20 minutes, until the crust is done). This is about as close as a Yank can come to the suet dumping crust my English sister-in-law makes.
Eat and enjoy. Goes well with Boone’s farm. Unless you’re scouting, when it goes well with lemonade.
Interlude
Edith Sitwell
Amid this hot green glowing gloom
A word falls with a raindrop’s boom…
Like baskets of ripe fruit in air
The bird-songs seem, suspended where
Those goldfinches—the ripe warm lights
Peck slyly at them—take quick flights.
My feet are feathered like a bird
Among the shadows scarcely heard;
I bring you branches green with dew
And fruits that you may crown anew
Your whirring waspish-gilded hair
Amid this cornucopia—
Until your warm lips bear the stains
And bird-blood leap within your veins.
Coming Soon.
Just submitted for Layout. Expected release in the middle of December. Stay tuned.
Nails it.
Jorge Cham nails it. Except my chair is blue and doesn’t come above my shoulders, this could be me with a student. I even look like the professor, except I don’t wear vests. (But I do wear shorts until it snows.)
"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com
FrankenKitty 4 #wewriwar
Frankenkitty
Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors. This is a sample from my work in progress, “Frankenkitty”, and I hope you enjoy it. It started out as a young-adult superhero book, and well, you’ll see. In last week’s snippet Jenny’s friendship with Amber and Mary grew, and in the midst of the highlight (or low-light) of high-school biology -fetal pigs- she let them in on the secret. Today we begin to see where they’re going with it.
Mary carefully sounded out “Experimente in der Reanimation von abgestorbenem Gewebe,” and then said, “That doesn’t mean experiments in reanimation, does it?”
Jennifer nodded, “Yes it does, Experiments in the Reanimation of Dead Tissue.”
“And the name inside,” Mary continued, “That’s not really Frankenstein, I mean the Frankenstein?”
“It is, my neighbor Mrs. Jones gave them to me. She was his great-granddaughter; these are his lab-notes.”
Amber laughed, “Do you think they’d work?”
“I’d like to try; bring back my cat Mr. Snuffles.”
“That’s not possible; he must have been insane.”
Whatever was there, no matter how ill-conceived or incorrect, wasn’t insane. Amber sat there, slightly stunned, “You know, Jenny, it might just work. ”
This is a work in progress. In other news, I’ve become a booktrope author, but more on that latter. It has meant a change in pen-name. Last Weeks is here and you can read the whole chapter if you’d rather.
I’m also looking for reviewers for my nearly ready book “The Curious Profession of Dr. Craven”
Passage
Passage
Cale Young Rice
A dark sail,
Like a wild-goose wing,
Where the sunset was.
The moon soon will silver its sinewy flight
Thro the night watches,
And the far flight
Of those immortal migrants,
The ever-returning stars.
An Arc
No, not this kind
This kind
My first “real” book, “The Curious Profession of Dr. Craven.” is in the final throes of production with booktrope. (You can see the kind of company it will keep at runawaygoodness. So we’re talking about a professionally edited and quality work.)
Right now I’m looking for reviewers. That means I’m giving away, yes free – though I want a review, advanced copies, or ARC’s. If you’d like one please fill out this form.
It’s a sweet romance set vaguely in the regency, definitely in the towns that are now London suburbs, and certainly a dashed good read. Any book that starts with grave robbing and the heroine waking up on the hero’s anatomizing table can’t be all bad.
Garden Under Lightning
It’s been raining, constantly. Time for a poem about spirits.
Garden Under Lightning
Leonora Speyer
(Ghost-Story) Out of the storm that muffles shining night Flash roses ghastly-sweet, And lilies far too pale. There is a pang of livid light, A terror of familiarity, I see a dripping swirl of leaves and petals That I once tended happily, Borders of flattened, frightened little things, And writhing paths I surely walked in that other life— Day? My specter-garden beckons to me, Gibbers horribly— And vanishes!
R. Harrison, Creative Enterprises 