Pen, Spoon & Dagger

Connecticut just had it's first heat wave of the summer. That means I'm concentrating on salads for dinner.  Check out one of my favourites. Shrimp & Asparagus Salad 3 cups spiral shaped pasta, uncooked   1 lb  shell-on medium sized shrimp   1 lb  asparagus, tough ends discarded, remainder cut into 2" pieces   ½ cup bottled ranch dressing   1 cup lite mayonnaise  (not salad dressing) ½ cup seafood cocktail sauce   2 Tbsp  fresh lemon juice   1 tsp Worcestershire sauce   1 large tomato, cored, seeded and chopped   6  scallions, sliced thinly on the diagonal   2 Tbs fresh parsley and chives, chopped   In a bowl, whisk together mayonnaise, ranch dressing, seafood cocktail sauce,lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce and salt& pepper to taste. Set aside. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add 1 Tbsp salt. Drop in the asparagus and cook 3 minutes. ...

Did you ever own a Raggedy Ann doll?  If you're female, I'm betting you did.  I live in Wilton, CT.  I've lived here for almost 30 years, but it wasn't until recently that I discovered that Ann -- and her equally raggedy brother, Andy -- were created right here in my home town. The duo's creator, Johny Gruelle, was born in Illinois.  He eventually moved his family to the East Coast, where he'd accepted a full-time position with The New York Herald, turning out a weekly comic strip - "Mr. Twee Deedle" - about a sprite who lived in an old gnarled apple tree, befriended a small boy named Dickie and sometimes Dickie's sister, Dolly, and  dispensed homilies about proper behavior. Around 1912, he built a house in the Silvermine area of Wilton -- home of Mr. Deedle's tree.  Somewhat of a pioneer, he included amenities most homes didn't have: electricity, running water and -- ta dah - indoor plumbing. There are several versions of the sto...

Today is Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day, or Mardi Gras, depending on your religion, location, and frame of mind.    But any way you look at it, today is the last day before Ash Wednesday, when Lent officially begins.  It’s interesting that the Mardi Gras season, with its parties and gluttonous meals, begins with 12 th Night (twelve days after Christmas) and runs through today, while Lent  -- and fasting -- only lasts 40 days.   Shrove derives from the verb to shrive -- to obtain absolution for one's sins, usually through confession and penance. Mardi Gras , translated to Fat Tuesday, so named because it marks your last chance for rich, calorie-ridden food before the fasting of Lent begins. Things have changed a lot since the days when I attended a Catholic boarding school.  Back then, fasting (no meat) and abstinence (limiting your daily eating to only one full meal in a day) were observed on both Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent.  At school,...

Most of us can't write our mysteries without the inevitable research.  Since a living/breathing expert is not always handy, I often (most of the time) turn to the Internet for facts and figures. It may be a flaw in my character, but I can't seem to stop researching once I get started. I jump from page to page, using those handy little hyperlinks the "experts" so thoughtfully provide.  And I swear I'm developing a new disease: Research ADD . The other day I was researching Swedish towns, looking for a likely name to use in my current manuscript.  I found a site listing town names and from there, it was all down hill, at least in terms of writing productivity. My navigation went something like this: town names -> country information -> things to do-> cultural festivals -> regional foods -> recipes -> gravlax.  Once I'd landed on recipes for this delectable treat, I felt compelled to discover gravlax's origins.  It wasn't a total...

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow so don't expect to hear from me for a while. For those of you unfamiliar with this event, National Novel Writing Month is a writing challenge -- a seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Over 120,000 world-wide will participate this year. But how many will finish? And let's be honest, the aim here is quantity not quality. Since I generally write between 500 and 1,000 words per day, the 1,667 words/per average is going to be more than slightly challenging. Thankfully I have a plot in mind, mixing a Victorian Inn with psychics, food, and, of course, murder.  Stay tuned to see how it all turns out. In the meantime, I won't have time for much cooking, so I'm sharing the world's easiest soup recipe. It's delicious and makes a huge amount! A mug of this will keep you typing all afternoon. Pumpkin Soup     3  10-...

I don't know where you're sitting at the moment, but I'm in a cold, wet house (too early in the year to turn on the heat), watching the rain drizzle down.  Last week we were 4 inches below normal for rainfall, this week we've made up the shortfall and pulled ahead by two inches.  Need I say more. This kind of weather makes me thing of one thing: soup.  So here's my cure for the rainy day blues. Butternut Squash and Apple Soup   (Serves 8 generously)     You can vary the spices any way you like.  If you don't like heat, start with just 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp cumin with black pepper to taste.   2 Tbs    unsalted butter   1 1/2 cups    sliced leek, white and pale green parts only   1 Tbs    minced garlic   6 cups    peeled and roughly diced butternut squash   3 cups    peeled and roughly diced apples   ...

Next week I'll be back to making and freezing gallons of tomato soup for this winter, but today I'm taking a  to deal with the bonanza crop of zucchini.  I love zucchini, but I've never had any success freezing it.  I've heard that you can pre-grate it and freeze, but mine turns to mush.  So, I use it up quickly, before they have time to grow into baseball bats - you know what I mean if you have a garden. Here's one of my favourite zucchini recipes - a vegetarian meal everyone will enjoy. Dill Zucchini Pie 1 Pillsbury refrigerated pie crust  1 cup grated Gruyere cheese  1 cup grated horseradish Cheddar cheese 3    small zucchini (6-8 oz each) or 2 medium, cut into1/4 inch thick rounds   1/4 cup  cup chopped fresh dill 2 Tbsp  chopped fresh Italian parsley   2-3 ripe tomatoes, sliced 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil   Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Roll the dough slightly to fit a 9-inch tart ...

It's that time of year again -- Tomato Overload.  You can't give them away because everyone else is suffering from the same problem.  Even the vendors at the Farmers' Market are sneaking free ones into your bag.  I don't care how beautiful they are, too many are too many.  Unless, of course, you like Puttanesca sauce.  And I love it. There are several theories on how this sauce originated, but its name -- which translates as "whore's sauce" -- suggests it was a favourite of "working girls" who could throw all the ingredients in the pot, let it simmer while they plied their wares, and then sit down to a delicious meal. No matter how it came about, it's delicious.  And it freezes beautifully, so now's the time to make a couple of batches and stash them in the freezer to enjoy when the supermarket has nothing but cardboard-tasting wannabes. Try it in January, with a big green salad and a glass of red wine.  You'll thank me! Putta...

So.  I'm going to write a mystery.  Sounds easy enough.  All I need is a plot and about 70,000 words.  No sweat. Yes, I know I'm delusional, but that's an asset when it comes to plotting. I am an unashamed Type-A personality.  Translate that into meaning that I will be working from an outline.  Said outline will become more and more detailed as the plot develops in my head.   That's why they include the outline numbering function in MS Word, right? My genre -- cozy or traditional mystery - says my word count should be between 60,000 and 80,000 words.   I'm going to target 75,000 and cut from there.  This equates to about 300 pages in a paperback. Ross Mahler is an author and screenwriter who has come up with a theory and a tool called the Script Beat Calculator . You type the number of pages in your script and Mahler’s Calculator will give you a guide (within a typical 3-act structure) of the page numbers by which the various “be...