VICTORIAN FARM

I am happy that my favourite pyromaniac, historian Ruth Goodman, is in the follow up series to Victorian Farm. I am giddy because the series follows the triumphs and travails of three historians on a rural estate who survive only on what they can grow in the garden, or forage, or raise in livestock with the technology of the late Victorian age. The sequels will be A Victorian Farm Christmas and Edwardian Farm.

Ruth Goodman is a domestic historian who also was a presenter in A Tudor Feast at Christmas , a recreation of a sixteenth century Christmas banquet.

I cannot wait until the next series. The Victorian Farm was delightful and worth every minute of viewing.


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UPDATE

I am currently employed as a technical writer and editor. The work is more steady but it is also tedious. The challenges that I venture lack emotional interest. Technical writing and editing, however much I may gain in compensation, bores me.

I want to be off with the fairies, or at least with fliskmahoy mice up to never any good. I continue to write on the second book of a novel series despite the grim outlook for the publishing industry in these less than holy days of the winter retail season. Work does not salve over deficits in the generous waste yard of this blighted economy. I feel as if I should have a tin cup to beg my work when I accept those alms from hires. There is not any space to write what one wants but only room to write what one must. I struggle with loneliness and, depressed with the near morbid thought, ken I am not isolated in the abyss.

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WHERE ARE WE NOW

….stranded in the middle of Canadian school system purgatory. I am still homeschooling on part-time because the powers, in this temporal existence, that be retain my child on a yo-yo schedule for an hour and a half, then return aforementioned child home to a mother who is stressed for time in trying to pick up gigs and to write a second novel. I am picking up copy writing bits and editing shards but this is razing me to the white, skull hued splinters of Joycean coloured bone.

What am I writing? For shame. I truly doubt the administrators who keep our family on the schedule’s leash would think in this manner, of James Joyce or anything connected to literature with regard to the dilemma. I cannot have an intelligent conversation with those rule-conscious minds that produce very little in real education. The schoolwork from this institution is not impressive. I have seen only the maths curriculum in the school district and it is not up to the standards that would prepare a child to go to the next grade level. There is not much one can do to maths to boggle the subject unless an incompetent teaches, and the school district has won the lottery with its failure to provide adequate subject matter. Or, to quote my eldest, “This is baby crap!” The literature is similarly dreadful. I taught my child at home for and the school provided “literature” was sunny and wholesome makelit about icicles and whatnot. Ew. I read to my child the works of Oscar Wilde, Stevie Smith, Emily Dickinson, and Heian era poetry ---among other choice morsels to feed the soul. The school prison does not give, with its rigid conformity, but scraps for the heart. Mine, certainly, now starves.

However, despite the hassles, I've kicked out another chapter last month in the novel and vetted another for inclusion last week. I have spotless turnaround time on gigs with perfect grammar and spelling. I will survive but these are the loneliest moments of my life.

BY THE WAY...

This is the copyright notice for my blog. I wrote, with the exceptions of the poems and other clearly marked articles, all the blogs. I do check on CopyScape and similar web sites to ascertain if and how someone is using my manuscripts.

That is all I have to write about this matter. I now return you to your continued reading.

TWH

A WARM ADDITION

TWH NOTE: I originally wrote this for a Facebook group, Cooking Is Easy last year. I am astounded that I did not repost earlier.



I cooked gluten-free, dairy-free Yorkshire pudding for Christmas. I found a recipe that I adapted and yes (would you expect anything less?), the receipt involves potential poisons.
Here is the recipe:

"You now no longer need to forgo those delicious Yorkshire puds - here Rosemary uses rice and tapioca flour with great success. For a twist, add a few thyme leaves, a blob of Dijon mustard or a few olives.

Ingredients
50g/2oz rice flour
50g/2oz tapioca flour
pinch of salt
2 eggs, preferably free-range
300ml/½ pint milk
10g/½oz butter, melted
olive oil or pure beef dripping (unless for vegetarians), for greasing tins { ANNE NOTE: I used a neutral canola oil because my daughters hate olive oil and my eldest is vegetarian like me.}
You will also need
deep bun tin

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 230C/450F/Gas 8.
2. Sift the rice flour and tapioca flour into a large bowl. Add the salt. Make a well in the centre and drop in the eggs. Using a small whisk or wooden spoon, stir continuously, gradually drawing in flour from the sides, adding half the milk in a steady stream at the same time. When all the flour has been mixed in, whisk in the remainder of the milk and the cool melted butter. Allow to stand for one hour.
3. Grease a hot deep bun tin with olive oil or beef dripping and fill up to half to two thirds with the batter. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. Remove from the tins and serve warm." The link is http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/yorkshirepudding_74775.shtml

Now the fun stuff begins. I used almond milk instead of regular milk. I was careful to use milk made from sweet almonds because bitter almonds have prussic acid that can be refined into cyanide if the 'nuts' (which are more akin to peach pits than botanically correct nuts) are not processed to remove the toxin. Bitter almonds, of course, are used for amaretto.

The next potential toxin is tapioca flour. Tapioca comes from the cassava (or manioc) plant. The plant contains prussic acid (thus cyanide) unless the toxin is pounded and cooked out of the plant. A paralytic neurological disease called konzo or mantakassa can result from eating raw cassava for many weeks. Fortunately, the tapioca that is purchased at the store has been highly processed to remove this threat.

How did the pudding turn out? I couldn't get a good rise out of the mixture probably because there was no gluten to give the pudding structure. It rose a bit and then collapsed. The taste was sweet from the almonds and my family, including me, devoured the lot. Everyone survived, with rave reviews for the dish,and I will definitely make this again.

Technorati Tags: comfort food, writing advice

HOLD THE CONGA LINE

I've put my life on hold to do one more round of homeschooling until October. Then it's off to the races!

I have been picking up gigs and I have a loyal clientèle but there are days when I wonder why some people get up in the morning. There are days I wonder why I get up in the morning. I will go to the end of the Earth (okay, maybe around the block) for an employer. However, I expect modest needs and demands. I, usually, have a good working rapport with one client but this person is obsessed with every jot of manuscript layout. No, it's not in my job description to format the damn article if the employer in question does not understand technology and realizes that certain attributes are just part of the word processing software. I just proofread and copy edit the very badly worded sentences, burnish them into deathless prose, and then flush the entire business out of my system as graceful as an elephant with a dire rhinovirus.

It's been one of those days.

TWH

September 26, 2009 Update: Er, I feel a wee bit embarrassed. How the *bleep* was I to know if not deleting a comment or note would leave a grey space in the manuscript? One-o-clock in the morning and I am ready to cry or eviscerate the computer with my teeth over the dreadful screed. It's all good, though, and I got paid.

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IN THE MEANTIME

I've taken a summer hiatus to be with my family. September is almost here and this means the children will be going back to school. I'm leading the parade of mothers doing happy dances down the main street, veritable can-cans (Good grief, I never knew she wore that for her knickers!)of euphoria that we will be grownups again and not just auto-matrons cleaning up the same debris over and over and over...

I have, in the interim, picked up editing gigs and spot work as a proofreader. It's a slow rebuild to my career after going through one year of being seriously, but not fatally, ill and another year for homeschooling that included keeping my youngest up to speed on her maths during the summer so she can rock going back to school. I know she will.She's smart like her parents.

And yes, I continue to dream the impossible dream of being a book author. I am tackling second book in a series chapter by bloody chapter.* During the blessed time when the kids are at school or otherwise not giving me grey hairs, I'll update the status reports on all of the above.

Yours Virtually,

TWH

*Note: I'm not swearing but I tend to cuff my characters around a bit. Thankfully (due to the tender mercies of the author)no one has died, yet.


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