Time

I have a phrase stuck in my mind, playing over and over. I think I read it on somebody's blog.

Everyone says that they don't have enough time.
But time is the only thing that they do have.

I have undertaken an exhaustive and scientific analysis of my time.

The horrifying conclusion was that I average nearly one hour per day of television! That, by itself, is not terror. Television can be entertaining and enriching! There are a lot of great things on television! I have learned so much from the Food Network!

But I found that what I watch is often neither entertaining nor enriching. In fact, if I try to look back on it, I remember nothing. The time is just gone.

For example, I watch 30-Minute Meals about twice per week. Even when the episode is a repeat, or is something that is not so tasty, and even when I fully intend to turn it off or change the channel, I usually just sit there and watch the whole thing anyway.

I don't want to look back on my life and remember nothing.

I think that part of my problem is my living room. The couch faces the television. You cannot sit down and fail to consider the blank screen. The TV has to stay there because of where the cable is. The couch has to stay there because it will not fit anywhere else.

But I still want to watch Masterpiece Theatre. (Tess of the D'Ubervilles is on next week!) I can watch TV while at the gym, but Trixie misses me when I am gone too often. I may want to watch a movie once in a while, even though I have had the same Netflix movie sitting around since October.

Solution: Television must be premeditated. Today, I am carrying the set upstairs and into the guest room closet. It is heavy and awkward. I will have to be motivated to bring it back down. I am placing a vase of flowers and an arrangement of books in the dusty spot where the television once was. No time to clean.

Change for the Better

I love New Years Resolutions.

I make resolutions every year. Having variously succeeded and failed spectacularly or fizzled and faded gradually every year, I have noted the patterns and settled on a few rules necessary for achievement.
1) Resolutions must be quantifiable and enforceable. Something like "I will exercise more" will not work, because its definition will be stretched according to convenience by mid-January. By February, turning the pages of a novel will be classified as vigorous exertion.
2) Resolutions must be realistic enough to become habits.
3) Resolutions must be exciting from the start. Thus, a resolution to scour the kitchen sink twice weekly will be likely doomed to failure.

I like to make three resolutions per year, in three different domains of self-improvement. I haven't fully committed to any but one just yet.

I was thinking about ways to measure a decrease in carb intake. I may resume the South Beach diet plan. Or I may just eliminate white flour, white sugar, white rice, and white potatoes from my diet instead. That way, I can still enjoy red wine and dark chocolate.

I was inspired over the holidays to resolve to drink more wine in the new year, after discovering that one of my bottles had turned to vinegar from neglect and that my knowledge of port wine is primitive. Maybe one new bottle per month would suffice.

I'd like to walk the dog more often, to get Trixie more exercise and courage and myself more vitamin D. But January is a bad month for walking outside. So is February. Really, Trixie won't be up for walking outside until June.

I have been running regularly and that is a triumph for me. But now I have strong legs and a weak core. I would like to get back to Pilates classes. I can't commit to particular days of the week because my work schedule is irregularly irregular. I would like to resolve for at least one day per week. But I know how that would go. I would put off the class until Friday, and then something would come up on Friday to prevent me from going. So, I'm still undecided about how to make that work.

I need to fix all the broken things in my house, but I'm not remotely excited about any of that.

So, here is the one resolution that I am excited about and settled upon! I have a writing goal! I will produce one writing excerpt per week and post it here. I am re-entering the world of writing prompts, ala Sunday Scribblings, Weekend Wordsmith, Writers Island, Write on Wednesday, Cafe Writing, Fiction Friday, etc. If all of these prompts are lackluster, then I must come up with my own, or else polish up a chunk of NaNoWriMo or share something from my writing group. The blogging world will hold me somewhat accountable, or at least I'll feel mildly guilty for not coming through with the goods. So! Get ready for a flood of fiction and memoir in 2009!

Submitted for the Writers Island

Cranberry Orange Cornmeal Cake

One of my New Years resolutions is to resume a carb-moderation lifestyle. I decided that I needed to end my current slump with a bang, before descending back into the dismal world of sugar-free fudgsicles.

I found this incredible cranberry orange cranberry cake with ricotta cheese on The Wednesday Chef. A new Christmas tradition has begun.

This is the best cake ever. For one thing, it is huge. I froze half of it and ate the rest for breakfast and dessert, and I still felt like I was eating it forever. It would make a wonderful gift or potluck offering. It is a beautiful cake. The color is a sunny yellow with cheerful cranberries within. Half of the cranberries go on top with a scattering of sugar, where the berries burst and mingle with the sugar into a crunchy and tart layer. And then there is the taste: the cake has a dense chewiness from cornmeal and creamy texture from ricotta cheese. The ricotta cheese serves the same role that sour cream does for coffee cake and donuts; it makes it perfect. The cranberries tie everything together and make it festive. I loved the orange zest, but I would like to try lime zest next time.

I should have taken pictures, but it doesn't matter, because it was as stunning as the pictures on the link above.

I bought a couple of bags of fresh cranberries today to freeze, for future preparations of cake. (I also like to make fresh cranberry sauce year-round, for topping oatmeal, peanut butter sandwiches, and ice cream.) Fresh cranberries will go out of season soon, but they last forever in the freezer.

I have a new camera

Trixie staying warm under her favorite blanket. Doesn't she look like a little toy?

Dexi (my parents' dog) and Trixie in the same frame, but not for long!


Dexi, my parents' dog. She was terrified of the flash; she thought it was lightning.

Trixie, hiding under a pillow.

Hearty Snow Day Chili

I have studied the Madison weather forecast today and come to the conclusion that I need a giant pot simmering on the stove while I putter around the house.

SlyGly's Hearty Snow Day Chili

Ingredients:
Extra-virgin olive oil
1-1.5 lbs lean ground meat (beef, turkey, or chicken)
1 large onion, white or yellow, chopped
1 large or 2 small bell or poblano peppers, any color, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced or pushed through garlic press
1 palmful chili powder
1/2 palmful ground cumin
1/2-3/4 bottle of dark amber rich beer (I like the local New Glarus Uff-Da! beer)
1 or 2 chipotles in adobo sauce, seeds scraped out and chopped, and 1-2 spoonfuls of adobo sauce
Worcestershire sauce, a few glugs
28 oz of tomatoes, diced or crushed or 15 oz of each (I love Muir Glen organic fire roasted)
1 small can tomato paste, low-sodium
2 15-oz cans of beans, low-sodium, rinsed, in contrasting colors (kidney, garbanzo, or black beans work well)
Optional: 1-2 cups of beef stock

Choice of toppings:
Chopped cilantro or parsley
Shredded sharp cheddar or pepper jack cheese
Crushed blue corn tortilla chips
Green onion, sliced
Pickled jalapeno peppers
Avocado, chopped

Serves 6-8

Instructions:
Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large soup pot and brown the meat, breaking it up with a spoon. After the meat has browned, add the onion, bell peppers, garlic, chili powder, and cumin, and cook until the veggies begin to soften. Increase the heat to med-high and pour in the beer, scraping the bottom of the pan to release browned bits. Allow the beer to reduce by half and then add the chipotle peppers, Worcestershire, tomatoes, tomato paste, and beans. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer, covered, for a minimum of ten minutes or up to 30 minutes. Top with your choice of toppings.

The chili is meant to be thick, but 1-2 cups of beef stock may be added if a soup-like consistency is desired.

Variations:
-Can use red wine or beef stock instead of beer.
-Can omit the ground meat and add cooked shredded chicken near the end of cooking time.
-Can add sliced or quartered mushrooms, handfuls of frozen corn, or diced zucchini.
-If carbs aren't a concern, serve with corn bread!

The Little White Horse

I chose to read The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge after seeing this picture and the linked trailer from the upcoming movie on Bookmoot. Isn't it a gorgeous room?

I liked the book, but I wish that I would have read it when I was eight or nine; I would have loved it then. It has a very Secret Garden-ish feel to it; there is the prevailing theme that hearty food and wholesome English countryside will solve all character flaws. I would recommend The Little White Horse to fans of light-hearted fantasies, but I personally prefer more conflict and suspense and ambiguous endings in mine.

However, I adored the bountiful, Hobbitty-like and Little House in the Big Woods-like food descriptions. I'll never outgrow that. In Chapter One, Section 4:

The supper was delicious. There was home-made crusty bread, hot onion soup, delicious rabbit stew, baked apples in a silver dish, honey, butter the colour of marigolds, a big blue jug of warm mulled claret, and hot roasted chestnuts folded in a napkin.

Poetry. And in Chapter 10, Section 1:

And after a good dinner of roast beef, gravy, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, greens, horse-radish sauce, apple-tart, sugar, cream, cheese, plum cake, and beer he was quite himself again.

These people eat all the time, and they never just have a bowl of cereal for breakfast! I'm off to go hunt down some mulled claret recipes....

Friday Fill-In #101

Friday Fill-Ins may be found here.

1. Snow is the one thing that Trixie has absolutely no curiosity about, and that baffles me.
2. I'm looking forward to curling into fresh and thick flannel sheets tonight.
3. Silk pointelle long underwear from LL Bean is the best wintery comfort ever! (It is as thin and strong as Frodo's mithril armor, machine washable, toasty warm and soft, and available in pretty colors! I just restocked on bunches of it!)
4. One of my favorite old tv shows is Arrested Development. How could that show get canceled?
5. I'm done with a beautiful apple cranberry pie, and I miss it.
6. The most enjoyable thing around the holidays is the food. Oh, cranberry panettone french toast.....
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to getting lost in a novel and wrestling down Trixie to give her ear drops, tomorrow my plans include wrapping gifts and writing and running and Sunday, I want to make a huge pot of soup!

Clarification

When I said, "I Won," I meant that I finished the 50,000 words and submitted my manuscript to the NaNo robots for word count verification. That is 82 single-spaced pages, 213492 characters, 1124 paragraphs, and 3746 lines. NaNoWriMo wins are about quantity rather than quality, though I must say that there are two or three truly brilliant paragraphs in there.

I plan to tinker away at the manuscript once my wrists recover. Right now I have a post-deadline lethargy.

On a different note, I would like to close with this: feast your eyes on this fabulous map. It's SODA.