Passing For Human

Holiday Treat Ice Cream

2012-12-07T01:12:35Z

You'll need an ice cream freezer for this recipe. I use one that attaches to my stand mixer, chills in the freezer, and doesn't use rock salt. Save the rock salt for your driveway.

This ice cream should capture something good from several holiday dishes--fruitcake, egg nog, and roasted chestnuts.

Ingredients:
2 cups half-and-half
chestnuts, enough to make 8 ounces of puree (I use about half a large jar)
one can (15 oz.), sweetened condensed milk (NOT evaporated milk, because that would be nasty)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 large eggs
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 to 1 cup dried fruit (cranberries, cherries, raisins, pineapple, apricots, or whatever makes you feel holiday-ish, without being nasty)

Instructions:
Start heating the half-and-half in a medium saucepan. You will want it to boil in about 10 minutes.

While that's cooking, puree the chestnuts in a food processor. Add the sweetened condensed milk, cinnamon, and nutmeg. If you like other spices like allspice or cloves, add a little of those too, but not much (cloves will make your tongue numb). Blend it until it's smooth.

Add the eggs and salt, and blend that until it's smooth.

Your half-and-half should almost be boiling. When it comes to a boil, start the food processor, and while it's running, pour the half-and-half into the food processor through the feed tube. Blend well.

Pour the mix back into your saucepan, and put it over low heat. You want it to get hot, but not to boil. Stir it constantly until it starts to thicken. (You just made a custard!) Set a strainer over a large bowl, and pour the custard through the strainer. If any of the eggs started to scramble, this should get them out of your ice cream.

Let the custard cool a little. Stir in the vanilla. If you have other good extracts--rum extract, brandy extract, maybe almond extract-- a half teaspoon of just one of them might be good too. Real rum or other liquor will tend to keep your ice cream from setting up firmly, so that's a trade-off between taste and texture you'll have to consider for yourself.

Put the custard in the refrigerator until it's cold, somewhere between 4 hours and a day.

When you're ready to freeze the ice cream, stir the custard. Freeze it in your ice cream freezer. When it's finished but still soft, stir in the dried fruit. Pour it into a container to freeze, and put it in your freezer overnight. Serve and enjoy.

Adapted from The Ultimate Ice Cream Book, Weinstein.

for future blogging

2012-10-11T22:07:58Z

I owe garunya a post about the movie G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

Good idea at the time, part whatever

2011-02-11T19:09:01Z

I have plenty of things I should be doing, and yet I keep thinking it would be fun to learn to play the ukulele.

Learning a few chords on the guitar would be much more useful. You might as well offer me salsa when I want chocolate.

I am feeling almost procrastinatey enough to start cleaning the house. But not quite.

Posted via LjBeetle

5 things make a State of the Avocado address

2011-02-04T20:20:34Z

1) There doesn't seem to be a decent Android app for reading or posting to LiveJournal. LJing in the browser is a bit messy, and I don't seem to be spending much time with the computer at home. But I'm trying to catch up with what you've been doing, honest.

That said, if you want me to know something or answer something, e-mail me. If you don't have my e-mail address, comment here. If I don't have your address, leave it in disguised form in the comments so you don't get spammed.

2) I'm buying a house. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm having my doubts.

3) Viable Paradise 15 has opened for submissions, so there's been some work for me on that end of things. Jay Lake and Sherwood Smith are replacing John Scalzi and Laura Mixon, and I think I'd pay to hear them sit around and critique the phone book. (Too many characters, not enough plot, they would probably say.)

4) The job continues. Some of my co-workers who had been chilly to me have warmed up. Maybe it's the weather. I think my biggest problem right now is figuring out which skills I should spend my time getting better at.

5) My travel schedule for the year is VP15 in early October, probably Worldcon Reno in August, and probably World Fantasy San Diego in late October. I had planned to travel to Austin next month on business, but that looks like a bad idea now because of house stuff. If I can work it out, I'll take one or two trips for work some time this year (they've been good about approving training travel), but they probably won't be to Exciting Destinations like, uh, wherever you live.

all I want for Christmas

2010-12-13T19:00:34Z

One of these to scan all of my books currently in storage, a Nook to put the books on, and an Oompa Loompa to do that fiddly bit in between.

I think I could mock up something suitable for the lights and cameras, using boom or gooseneck microphone stands. The platen and the adjustable cradle, though -- not sure I understand them well enough yet, though.

pills

2010-12-09T15:21:15Z

It amuses me that my daily packet of vitamins looks like a, hrm, different sort of preventative. I usually try to keep them turned the other way (so the pills are visible, rather than just the gold wrapper) when I leave them on my desk at work, before I take them mid-morning.

One of my daily rituals. Any funny little daily rituals on your part, f-list?

(I'm trying out a new app for my phone, Pixelpipe, in hopes of making it easier to upload pictures to LJ and, in turn, easier to blog more often. Expect hiccups.)

Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train

2010-09-29T15:33:28Z

Flying to Boston this afternoon for Viable Paradise 14.

Will probably post short observations during the workshop on Twitter, as @MrPersimmon. If I collect them and drop them into LJ as a daily-or-so post, I'll try to keep it as unobnoxious as possible for Twitter hatred.

I'll read all comments here and will try to respond as best I can. I expect it will be mostly on my phone, and I haven't seen a good LJ app for Android.

As will be apparent in any photos, I seem to have acquired a beard. (Voidmonster, you have no competition from this direction.)

Dreams can come true

2010-08-09T21:52:37Z

Who hasn't dreamt of seeing the National Roller Skating Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska? I hope I'll have time.

For now, my flight is delayed in Chicago-O'Hare, known (by me, at least) for its terrible food choices. Let's hope I find something better than the Manchu Wok.

Not that I'd say it over there, but

2010-08-03T13:20:50Z

I miss John Scalvi.

Not a follower

2010-07-29T18:57:31Z

I swear I was thinking about getting a Droid X before Scalzi got his.

It's here!

2010-07-27T22:26:29Z

Lincoln's Sword by Doyle and Macdonald is at my Barnes & Noble!

Jane Austen's Fight Club

2010-07-25T01:02:23Z

Courtesy of Mary Robinette Kowal and sartorias.

How could Mark Twain have been so, so wrong about Jane Austen? She makes almost any mash-up better.

These are totally unauthorized, BTW

2010-07-13T23:51:21Z

I workshop like
Doyle and Macdonald

I Workshop Like by the Avocado of Death, VP alum. Improve your writing!

I workshop like
Laura Mixon

I Workshop Like by the Avocado of Death, VP alum. Improve your writing!

I workshop like
Steve Gould

I Workshop Like by the Avocado of Death, VP alum. Improve your writing!

I workshop like
Elizabeth Bear

I Workshop Like by the Avocado of Death, VP alum. Improve your writing!

I workshop like
John Scalzi

I Workshop Like by the Avocado of Death, VP alum. Improve your writing!

I workshop like
*NH

I Workshop Like by the Avocado of Death, VP alum. Improve your writing!

ETA: I have no idea how to share these, other than directing you to your browser's "View Source" button or equivalent. Cutting and pasting the HTML into a comment results in HTML.

State of the Avocado

2010-07-12T14:39:30Z

One rejection last week, a personal rejection with a useful bit of criticism in it. I suspect that the bit of criticism is a problem with a lot of the pieces I have on the scrap heap, and that I'll need to correct that before I'm able to regularly sell pieces. (No, I'm not mentioning specifics here.)

One piece written last week, for a prompt game with someone on my f-list who can reveal it here if they wish. It's strange to finish a first draft and realize what you were writing fanfic of (non-skiffy; the prompt gave me the skiffy element to add in), right down to the number of syllables and stresses in your characters' first and last names.

Medical stuff going on with my family, which has taken some time lately. Don't worry; everyone's fine.

The new job continues. I have a big exam later this year that I'm having to study for. Apparently I have not only forgotten everything I learned in college, but also some things that I saw in a book once. Time has not merely burgled the cabinets and drawers of Memory, not even stopped at the furniture, but stolen the carpet, drywall, and slab. Wish me luck.

Viable Paradise stuff seems to be trucking right along, due in particular to the dogged (catted?) persistence of Aviatrix18.

If you have a Readercon report, feel free to link it in comments. It seemed like hardly anyone wrote much about 4th Street this year, and I'm feeling withdrawal from the friends and interesting discussions.

slush count and rejection points

2010-06-25T01:57:55Z

Slush count: the number of items you have in slushpiles (editorial queues), waiting to be read. The longtime reader will, no doubt, recall my post about imaginary slush count, a post which I am too look for right now.

Rejection points: the number of rejections you have received, since whenever you start counting from. (I think I got that from bmlg.) Rejection points don't count (for me at least) if you really want to be rejected -- they only count if they're from markets you would be happy to be published in and content to be rejected by.

As of yesterday, I consider both counts to be set to zero.

As of right now, I have a slush count of two. Go, me.

Current goal: slush count + rejection points >= 10 by VP this year. If this turns out to be way too easy a goal, I'll adjust upwards.

I should probably write something else.

Thoughts upon returning from the dead

2010-06-22T13:22:04Z

Either that generic non-dairy creamer isn't very good, or I've just flavored my coffee with grated Parmesan.

The real answer to all of LOST's unanswered questions

2010-05-24T15:50:16Z

One word: Gilligan.

Behind the (Magic) 8-Ball

2010-05-20T20:07:59Z

Prophesy, F-list! Would I enjoy seeing the film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? I'm thinking about seeing it, maybe this weekend.

Brontë Sisters, Power Up!

2010-05-14T03:01:16Z

So, which year will Alton Brown teach at Viable Paradise?

2010-05-13T17:18:30Z

I have been listening to recordings of some of the panels from the 2009 4th Street Fantasy Convention. Let me share a bit of it with you, with Elise Matthesen's permission, and you might see why it's one of my favorite conventions.

At 43 minutes into the “Learning to Analyze Structure” panel, moderator Beth Meacham recognizes Elise Matthesen.

Elise says, “Well, when I’m reading, and I’m looking at plot, and structure, and theme, I think of it in terms of an episode of Iron Chef. No, really – you know this show? There’s a secret ingredient, and there’s two chefs who are competing to make some very cool meal, each dish of which involves the secret ingredient.

“I think the theme is whatever your challenge ingredient is – if it’s squid this time, if it’s inheritance as we were saying in the family panel, whatever.

“The number of dishes and the order that they are presented in is the structure. You have a soup. It’s a hot soup. Then you have the three little cold things that contrast with each other. And then you have the
baked thing with the sauce that echoes something from the soup. And then you have, maybe, the fourth dish if you had time to fit it in and your editor didn’t say, ‘Cut that.’ And then you have the really, really
over-the-top dessert that suddenly makes all the other flavors in your mouth make sense.

“Now what plot is…”

Beth Meacham, the panel moderator has been interrupting Elise for the last few sentences, telling Elise to stop. Beth says, “Stop now.” The audience laughs uncomfortably. “Please come up on the panel.”

The audience applauds.

Beth replaces the members of the panel, except for Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who had just been expressing his frustration at being unable to comment. Beth asks Patrick to stay, and she transfers moderating duties to
him, as Elise and others are seated on the panel.

Elise continues.

“Theme is the challenge ingredient. It [the show] always starts out with, ‘As memory serves.” And structure is the order of dishes, and the hot and the cold, and the size, and the texture in your mouth. Is it liquid? Is it
fast-moving? Is it a slow thing? How long does it take to chew this? All that stuff. Okay, what plot is – plot are the specific dishes. Plot is – hello, my secret ingredient is... Steve, give me an ingredient.”

Steve Brust suggests ginger as an ingredient.

Elise says, “My plot is – the first course is a ginger soup, where they’ve done a ginger clear consommé, with a little ginger amuse-bouche next to it. Then the second thing is the three different kinds of ginger, spicy,
candied, and pickled. The third is the fish that’s had the ginger wrap with the blah, blah, blah. That’s your plot, the very specific tastes. And that’s the pretty words, how well you get the spices.”

Patrick says, “I’m not sure I follow all that, but I’m hungry.”

Skyfyre will like this

2010-05-13T01:34:25Z

From the makers of Selleck Waterfall Sandwich, it's Nimoy Sunset Pie!

(via ellen_fremedon)

there were angels dining at the Ritz

2010-05-12T12:50:44Z

Hospital cafeteria again. 167 words in about half an hour. Better tomorrow.

I'm beginning to think more highly of JIm Macdonald's "Key Lime Pie" theory of short stories, for some stories more than others. I expect to end up with several complete rewrites (no sentences carried over from the previous versions) of the current WIP, a horror short-short for a Pseudopod contest. Luckily there is a 500-word limit.

--xxx--

A few thoughts from me about Iron Man 2 and coming attractions, since krylyr asked.

A few thoughts from me about noir to see and read, since ellen_fremedon asked. voidmonster and I were talking the other day about a general definition of noir, or at least the ethical universe noir exists in, and I think I may have worded it better in that conversation than at EF's journal. Still a work in progress, I suppose.

living is easy with eyes closed

2010-05-11T13:07:04Z

Hospital cafeteria. Aargh. Let us not speak of it.

--xxx--

I'm very tired of seeing Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter fighting dirty for the privilege of getting beaten by John Boozman. I haven't decided which primary (D or R) to vote in this year, because I'm not sure which of the races are likely to really matter. (In Arkansas, party registration doesn't determine which ballot you get during a primary. You just walk up and tell the poll workers which ballot you want.) I suspect there will be a lot of nose-holding for those voting in that race, except for those who have decided to vote against any incumbent, anywhere, no matter how loathsome the alternative. I'm surprised no one has registered the ballot name "Non-incumbent Smith" or somesuch.

Check out a brief history of ~~the dead~~Arkansas' senatorial delegation, such as it has been. It's not unheard of to have a Republican Senator from Arkansas (Tim Hutchinson was one as recently as 2003), but it's obviously the exception, not the rule. However, if Boozman gets elected (as looks likely) and wins re-election in 6 years, he would be the first Republican Senator to do so in Arkansas' 170+ year history. I suspect that will be a more interesting race than this one.

--xxx--

papersky on exposition: "The story should never stop to do it, except on those rare occasions where you're Neal Stephenson."

yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon

2010-05-10T12:57:27Z

Where am I, and why are all these cattle eating jimsonweed? Don't they know it's a hallucinogen?

Got in a few minutes of writing at (wait for it) the hospital cafeteria! Rewriting a story for the next flash fiction contest at the Escape Artists forum, this time for Pseudopod. I wrote the story (<500 words) last week and am thoroughly dissatisfied with it.

"Next flash fiction contest"? Yes, I wrote two flash fiction pieces last month and submitted them to last month's flash fiction contest at the forum, that time for Podcastle. I'll provide links to the forum when I'm less pressed for time.

We will see if I can come up with two workable ideas, much less two workable short-short stories, for Pseudopod this month and for Escape Pod this month. Am I alone in thinking that, of SF/F/Horror, science fiction is the hardest to do at the <500-word length?

--xxx--

Songs that I needed to hear during my commute this morning: Aretha Franklin's "Today I Love Everybody," Ben Folds Five's "Army."

Back in the office after being out for training the last few days. Now I know a tiny bit more than I did before about incinerators, gas control at landfills, and stationary reciprocating engines. Yay.

Movies seen in the last few days: Iron Man 2 and Mother (or Madeo, in the original Korean). One is a pretty competent superhero blockbuster, with too few scenes with Downey and Paltrow or Downey and Mickey Rourke. (It's also no Dark Knight, so abandon that hope before you step over the popcorn crumbs on the way in." The other one is... well, it's a mystery with some suspense, a surprisingly seamless blend of a character-driven and plot-driven movie. Noir fans, see the second.

Truth is stranger than fiction, part n+1

2010-05-06T14:36:43Z

I could never get away with creating a fictional landfill called Fresh Kills.