A recipe and ramblings

(Scroll down to skip to the recipe)

Did you get a chance to watch the lunar eclipse last night?

I was happy that I did, but it’s left me quite tired this evening. I was going to write everyone a nice thoughtful blog post, it is down on my “things to do this week” list – “write nice thoughtful blog post” – but not only did I watch the eclipse, I was also in the city yesterday, walking around for hours, deciding to buy or not buy various things, wearing out both my feet and my brain, and we’re just going to have to be content with whatever I bash together here, thoughtful or not.

I tried to take a couple of photographs of the eclipse, but I could not figure out how to get either of my cameras to see what was actually there, instead, they kept hallucinating the moon as still full. I suppose I could have figured it out eventually, something about changing them to manual instead of automatic, but I wanted to be paying more attention to the actual moon instead of focusing on how to a picture of the moon. It was neat to watch.

While waiting for the lunar eclipse, I watched Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. I’m fairly sure I missed one or two “episodes” in the franchise, and I’m not sure what the movie was trying to say, if anything, but even though I’m not generally a big fan of CGI, I will say the special effects in this film are really quite good, and it was an entertaining 2+ hours. I almost didn’t notice it was a film over two hours long.

I also watched Dune: Part Two earlier this year. These are the only Oscar nominees I’ve seen from the last year, and I did not watch the Oscar ceremony. Did anyone watch the Oscars ceremony?? No one I know watched it. I wasn’t even sure when it was on. (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a better time than Dune Two,it’s not as long!) Anyway, there are one or two more Oscar nominees from 2024 that I will probably eventually get around to watching, but I’m not in a huge hurry.

Still haven’t read anything outstanding recently. Had a look at a couple of books since I chatted at you last, but nothing I feel particularly moved to recommend. There are a couple of books in my to-read pile that I am hopeful about, and after I sleep, I hope to start on one of them this weekend. I’ve been listening to some random French channels on YouTube. I could swear I heard someone say there are four daily meals in France, is that right??!

Progress on the third cookbook edit continues. I crossed the half way mark in the manuscript again today. I’ve had to take out a couple more recipes – one because it was simply repetitive, and one because I wasn’t sure if I had permission to use it. We now have 90 recipes in the book.

A writing friend of mine sent me a very kind note about one of my fiction pieces the other day. After a stretch now where I’m stuck in editing and not getting any new creative work down, it was really nice to hear that when I do make with the creativity, I am not complete trash at it, and I definitely have something to get back to once I finish with this cookbook-stuff! I appreciated the encouragement.

Yes, I’ve set aside all creative work at the moment to power through this third round of edits. I hope to have it finished by the end of the month. Then I will need to format it for publication, and get a hold of a few beta readers. I’m hoping to find one or two people who know something about the classic radio drama world to review at least the parts dealing most with the radio show, as well as a couple of more “general audience” type readers to go over it and let me know what they think.

Illustration is still an open question.

Here is one of the recipes I dropped from the cookbook today, there is nothing wrong with it! It’s actually quite nice, it’s just that by the time I got to this one, I had already triple-checked one that’s very similar to it already.

Stovies

Serves: 4 to 6

“To stove” apparently means “to stew” in Scots! And this is a lot like stew.

You would think I would know more about Scottish cuisine, with a name like MacMichael.

Certainly it’s likely fair to assume a lot of the food I grew up eating descended from Scottish cuisine.

But I don’t have a lot in my head under the file label “Scottish food.”

This dish is a use-it-up dish, perfect for a cool, rainy day. Traditionally, I’m told, it would often be served on Monday, using up the leftovers from Sunday roasts. (Super-traditionally, I feel compelled to point out, there were no potatoes in Scotland. And I doubt many Scottish peasants were regularly eating beef. There are only so many cattle you can steal from the English at a time!)

This turns out almost like a stew, only you stop cooking it before all the vegetables start falling apart.

You will need either a dutch oven, if you’ve got one, or a large oven-safe casserole dish.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp vegetable oil or fat (lard is traditional)

2 medium sized brown onions, peeled and diced

¼ to ½ a pound of cooked meat – left over roast beef, chicken, sausage, ostrich, whatever! Just not fish. You could probably use seasoned tofu effectively, or you could simply leave out the meat and use a vegetable stock for a vegetarian version of this dish

1 ½ pounds potatoes – peeled and quartered

up to about a pound and a half of other vegetable – cauliflower, beans, beets, carrots, turnips, it really doesn’t matter, as long as they are fairly sturdy but won’t take longer than potatoes to cook! You can either use already-cooked veggies, or cook them along with the potato. Chop them up a bit first before you cook them.

salt and pepper

about 3 cups of beef or chicken stock – this will vary depending on the size and shape of your dutch oven or casserole dish

Directions:

Start preheating the oven, to 375F

In a pan on the stove top, heat oil/fat, then add onion and cook over medium high heat for about five minutes, until the onion has softened. Add meat, stir around

Add the onion and meat to your casserole dish as a bottom layer

Top with a layer of potato, add salt and pepper. Layer the rest of the potato on, salt and peppering as you go

If they need to be cooked, also add the other vegetables now

Pour in enough beef stock so that it comes up to a little below the level of your vegetables in the casserole dish. (You don’t need the stock to cover the top layer, it’ll bubble up and there will also be steaming that happens.)

Stick the casserole in the oven, with a lid on it. Wait for about half an hour

After about half an hour, if your other vegetables were already cooked, add them in, stirring them in a bit. Check on the level of stock. You want to keep a level of stock where it’ll be bubbling near the top

You might as well check if your potatoes are done at this point as well

Put everything back in the oven for at least five minutes to warm up the potentially newly added vegetables, and longer if the potatoes weren’t ready yet

Check every ten minutes or so from now on, you want to stop cooking as soon as the potatoes (and other vegetables) are fork-soft, but before they start breaking up!

Serve