Corned Beef Hash, Semi-Homemade

     I think I have the canned corned beef and fresh potatoes version figured out.

     Cubed the potatoes and piled up the cubes in a bowl of cold water with some rosemary and parsley.  Poured off about half the water and warmed it in a big skillet until it was boiling; took away a little more water, added some freeze-dried onion and let it simmer while I cubed up the canned corned beef.

     The meat was Kroger's house brand.  It's all South American canned corned beef, in those trapezoidal cans, and the price was good.  (It also had an expiration date over four years in the future, so I'll be stocking a few cans of that stuff for rainy days.)

    Added the meat, mixed everything together, smoothed it with the back of the spoon and let it cook uncovered until it was about as dry as I wanted; covered it and let it cook awhile longer (and made myself a fried egg for on top, in a separate one-egg pan).  Cooked it uncovered just a bit more, so it would brown some on the bottom, then served it up.

     It was good.  Not too salty, which is always a concern with canned corned beef.  The potatoes did brown a little and they were well-cooked.

     So there's the trick.  Cook the potatoes by boiling first, don't add salt.

Almost Missed A Day

     Okay, look, I slept all day.  Some sort of awfulness has been making the rounds; Tam had it badly earlier in the week and I kind of just pushed through the same thing on Thursday and Friday. 

     Today was a day of recovering.

The Plants Are Goin' At It

     This year's pollen season is proving painful for me.  Sadly, when the plants are doing their thing outside your bedroom window, throwing a bucket of water on them doesn't stop them; quite the opposite, as the Spring rains are demonstrating.

     Three out of the last four mornings, I have woken up with intense sinus pain; the fourth morning was the same, only not as strong. And this despite over-the-counter allergy pills.  After the second time, I tried a sinus rinse.  That worked, at least it took the wosrt edge off -- and used up the last of the distilled water.  Tam picked up more yesterday, which I'm looking forward to using this morning.

     It might hurt, but at least the grass is green and lush, the trees are leafing out and there are flowers everywhere!  And no snow.  Yeah, kind of worth the tradeoff.  Maybe.

Racing A Deadline

     It's no less a deadline for being self-imposed: manuscripts for the writer's group I'm in are due today.  I'm not quite a quarter of the way done with my project.  Finally -- barely! -- above the minimum word count but I'd like to hand the group a completed story. 

     It may not be possible.  Still, there's time left and I hope to make progress.

     If I can get this done, if it's not too clumsy, if I can slog through the formatting, I may try to release it via Amazon's "Kindle Direct Publishing." 

Nos-spy-stalgia

     Remember when "Russian agent in Washington D.C." meant something like the deep-cover covert illegals on the TV series The Americans, skulking about and doing skullduggerous things?

     Now they've got their own radio station! WZHF AM and a "translator" on 105.5 FM carry "Radio Sputnik," and whatever you think about the various English-language voices on it, most of them U. S. citizens, the programming is run by the government of Russia.  Oh, Senator, tune to a different station, quick!

     At least they're not sneaking around, right?

A New C. J. Cherryh Alliance-Union Novel

     A couple of days ago, I mentioned C. J. Cherryh, and specifically one of her fictional settings that I enjoy, the "Alliance-Union" universe.  At the time, it struck me that we'd probably seen as much of it as there was going to be; in 2009, she'd wrapped up several loose ends in Regenesis, and most of her work in recent years has been on another (and possibly loosely-linked) series that follows human/alien interaction down a very different track.

     Turns out there's at least one more, novel Alliance Rising: The Hinder Stars.  Listed as a collaboration with Jane Fancher, the tone and style match the earlier books well.  It's set at a critical juncture in the overall arc of fictional history.  Like Downbelow Station, it uses several viewpoints to tell the story.

     It's enjoyable so far, and the task is no small one: the Alliance-Union novels are set all throughout the history of the development of a star-spanning civilization with three centers of power and the development of at least four technologies with substantial cultural effects.  Any new novel has to fit into the previously-established timeline.  At this point, that means a lot of cross-checking!  In a character-focused set of novels covering a couple of centuries or more, some discrepancies can be waved away as the distortions of history and personal recollection; but you can't bend it too far.

     Cherryh has a knack for the "lived-in future;" her stories read as if they're being told by someone who has Been There and Done That.  I can see where some of it may come from, but that takes nothing away from the end result.  If you liked the first season of The Expanse, you've already seen an SF setting that owes a huge debt to C. J. Cherryh; Heavy Time (1991) and Hellburner (1992), very early in the Alliance-Union timeline, will be familiar territory.

Scooter At Last -- Lawnmowing, Too Soon

     It wasn't really too soon to mow the yard.  The little white flowers had passed their peak, the violets are flourishing, and the dandelions--  The dandelions have much too good a foothold.

     Sunday, the weather was nice: not overcast, not rainy, not chilly.  It wasn't even very windy.  After Meet The Press, Tam had range work (followed by her weekly appointment with ribs at Fat Dan's Deli) and I had a nice long soak in warm water.  By the time she back, I was ready for the day.

     Tam had loaded the dishwasher before she left.  I started a load of laundry, checked the lawnmower batteries and put the low on on the charger, and went to work finishing up the new battery in my scooter.

     One of the cell covers had been misplaced and once I had the old battery off, I borrowed one from it.  With the new battery in place -- which is only awkward, the rubber strap that holds it in place is tricky to fasten -- I tried a rubber stopper for the open cell in the old battery.  Too big!  I managed to whittle it down to fit and packed the battery away in the box the new one had come in, with a little baking soda for luck.  I had looked and looked for missing stopper all the previous week without finding it.

     I kick-started the scooter without too much trouble (but that's why the year's first start isn't electric; you can run a new battery flat that way) and let it idle until it was happy while I checked and refilled the tires, checked the lights, and realized with a sinking heart that I hadn't updated the sticker on the plates -- and I had no idea where the paperwork had got to after my desktop water spill last month.

     Went in, babysat the washer though a spin cycle (it tends to get out of balance) and went back to the garage to get the mower out.  Naturally, there were snow shovels and snow-sweeping brooms piled atop it; by the time I had the thing out, it was time to watch the second spin cycle and then load the dryer.

     Meanwhile, the lawn care crew for our neighbor to the north had been and gone and our new neighbor to the south had finished her mowing -- and the vegetation in the front yard of Roseholme Cottage was standing high and wild between them, starting to look like a set for Tarzan-of-the-Chipmunks in contrast!

     Time to fix that.  The grass was high enough -- and still damp from the week of off and on rain we'd just had -- that I set the mower to its highest setting.  The strip between the sidewalk and house went fast enough, and I had the front yard about two-thirds done before I needed to empty the clippings.  The rest of the front and the narrow side yards filled up the clipping bags again and I'd started on another before it was done. Gave the back yard nearest the house a quick pass just for luck, before I put the lawnmower away.

     Inside, to get cleaned up a little and see if Tam was interested in dinner (she was not; a nice rack of falling-off-the-bone ribs is a substantial meal), and see if maybe, just maybe I would find the 2020 stcker for the scooter plates.  It turned out to be right about where I'd hoped it would be!

      So I gathered helmet, gloves, riding jacket (it appears to have shrunk since 2006!), put on boots and clomped out to the garage.  In short order, I was zooming up the block, free as a bird.

     The scooter's feeling pretty good so far this year, at least for a few trips around the block.  So I took it for a quick grocery store run: minute steak, Brussels sprouts, baking potato, sandwich fixings for work, Cajun snack mix for Tam, what was I forgetting? Something. 

     Back home, it takes some maneuvering to line the scooter up to back it into the garage.  A couple of feet away from the apron, I happened to look down and there was something black amid the pale gravel -- a squirrel-gnawed walnut hull?  Dead leaf?  Hey, is that--

     It was the missing battery cell cap.  I stowed it, parked the scooter, rinsed it off  and had it in place on the old battery before I took the groceries inside.

     So the old battery is ready to go back, the scooter's back in service -- and I'd forgotten to pick up sugar.  Oh well, the confectioners 10X sugar needs used up anyway.

Writing

     Or trying to write, anyway.  I have a short story, maybe even a novelette, written in first person.  It's not bad but there's a lot of background to impart, which will work better if it's written in "close third person," looking over the character's shoulder, knowing what she thinks, but able to take in a wider world than only what she sees.

     That's tricky.  It tends to veer off into first person or omniscient viewpoint.  The first is, well, lazy; you can tell great stories that way (Raymond Chandler uses it for his "Philip Marlowe" yarns) but it's a little like training wheels or a clip-on necktie.  The second is old-fashioned; I've read a lot of classic fiction written just that way, but modern readers find it dull.

     SF writer C. J. Cherryh has a real knack for close third person; many of her stories of people caught up in the interstellar struggle between Earth, Union and the Merchanter's Alliance are told that way -- Merchanter's Luck, Finity's End, Tripoint and Rimrunners are all good examples of this.*  The last on the list does an exceptionally good job of maintaining the distinctive voice of Elizabeth Yeager, the main character, while not leaving the reader stuck in her skull (it begins with a different character's view of her, and then moves to follow her).  So I pulled the book from my shelf to use as a reference, and once again, I'm drawn into the story!

     Still learning from it, but I'm re-reading the novel for the I don't know how-manyth time.  There's a lot to be gleaned from her work: Cherryh's characters live in a complicated, high-tech world and she's quite happy to leave you to work out the details on your own.

     Now I need to get back to work on that story.
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* All of these novels share a common theme, too, of outcasts finding a place where they fit in, though not after considerable uncertainty and struggle.  You can find them all in hardcopy, new or used; presently, I find only one available for Kindle: Merchanter's Luck forms half of the compilation Alliance Space, with the interesting Forty Thousand In Gehenna as the other half.

Slept In Again

     Friday was....not a great day.  Had a lot to do, got most of it done,. some stuff went wrong. 

     Today, I slept late, napped in the afternoon, and I'm off to bed now.

Late Start

     Sleeping in was a wonderful treat today, thanks to work schedules being rearranged for a special event this weekend.  Oh, I'll have to work late, too, but I've been staying up pretty late this week and that should help.

     Slept with a window open, too.  Look, if I'm going to have to take allergy medicine anyway, I might as well enjoy the fresh (if pollen-laden) air.  The cats enjoy it; even Tamara's cat, as determinedly indoor a cat as you will meet, spent some time sitting in the window and gazing out at the yard.

Another Sure Sign Of Spring

     This morning, I made myself a nice cup of steaming-hot coffee -- cream, sugar, one teaspoon of each -- stirred it and three ants floated to the top, all deader than a nail or a pop star past his prime.  (Now that's good coffee!)

     Checking, yes, the Sugar In The Raw, with its handy (but hardly hermetic) metal pour spout, was thoroughly infested with tiny ants.

     The coffee area next to the stove is a new place for them to show up; in previous years, they have preferred the sink and microwave side of the long, narrow kitchen here at Roseholme Cottage.  But I shouldn't have been surprised; after all, sugar, ants.

     I have backup sugar, because of course I do; usually there's a box of sugar and a jar of coffee creamer warming up on the sidelines.  It just so happens that I hadn't picked up the next box of sugar yet but I always have a box of 10X confectioner's sugar in the cupboard and usually one of brown sugar, too.  That's just how it's done.  (Thanks, Mom!)  I went with the confectioner's for this morning.

     Time to rig the kitchen for summer.  It's a good excuse to go through it and straighten things up.

Cauliflower Rice?

     "Cauliflower rice," consisting of that brassica chopped fine, turns out to be something I should only consume in moderation.

     Made a big wokful of "fried rice" using the substitute last night: steak tips, mushrooms, carrot, onion and celery with a nice sesame-ginger sauce.

     I like rice.  A big old steaming bowl of rice with some veggies and meat in it is one of my favorite ways to make a meal, anything from Thai-spiced tuna and steamed soybeans over microwave brown rice* to good old Sino-American fried rice to Hoppin' John.  So when big packages of "cauliflower rice" started showing up in the produce section at the grocery, I knew it was only a matter of time until I was going to try it.  After all,  Tam's avoiding carbs, I like rice dishes, what's not to love?

     The next day's effects, is what.  Oh, nothing dire; but I had a plate and a half of the stuff and that translates into a lot of walks down the hall to the porcelain office.  It tends to get in the way of accomplishing one's work.

     I'll stick to real rice in the future, thank you all the same.
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* This is a fancy-looking one-bowl meal you can make with some deli "edamame salad" or microwaveable shucked green soybeans, Bumblebee or Starkist spiced tuna in tiny cans, and one of those little nukable plastic rice cups.  Set the skinny red pepper to one side unless you like it hot.