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Holiday Best

19 Dec 2014 by KRAG

RudolphWe have a stay-cation coming up, beginning in just over two hours. I’ve been looking forward to another chance to “practice my retirement” for some time. The year 2014 hasn’t been good for time off–most of our attempts at vacations have gotten bollixed up or re-purposed by events and necessities. But for this one, we’ve pretty much cleared the decked halls of hurdles and complications.

So, what do I intend to do? Some of these things may sound mundane, but that’ll tell you what kind of year it’s been.

  • Read a book. Yep. A whole book.
  • Read the newspaper.
  • Take walks around the lake.
  • (Hopefully) get Pepper out of the shop and back on the road.
  • Finish the winter clean-up in the gardens.
  • Have my birthday sushi dinner (my birthday was three weeks ago).
  • See a movie in the theater.
  • Roast a capon.

Sometimes, it’s the little things.

k

1962 TR3B

Posted in Culture | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

Twice-Cooked Times Two

18 Dec 2014 by KRAG

Simple LivingBiscotti. You can’t have just one.

No…literally, you can’t have just one biscotti, because biscotti is the plural form. If you only have one, you have a biscotto. The word biscotti (and biscuit, for that matter) comes from the Latin root: bis – coctus, meaning “twice-cooked,” and they are, indeed, baked twice. What I like best about biscotti is that the recipe is essentially a blank slate that allows for myriad variations.

Below you’ll find two of my variations: Classic biscotti, with that lemon and anise-seed flavor, and my Holiday biscotti, with orange and cranberries. Check the Notes for ideas on additional variations.

Continue Reading »

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We Who Are About to Die…

16 Dec 2014 by KRAG

It’s a rare occasion when I’m wholly surprised by a movie. Rarer still is when I come across a star-powered film of which I’ve heard absolutely nothing. Rarest of all is a movie that combines both of these.

Morituri (1965) is such a film.

Before I stumbled across it while channel-surfing, I’d never heard of this WWII story starring Marlon Brando and Yul Brynner. It was released in ’65 to middling reviews and box-office crickets. The title of the film was deemed the main culprit for this poor performance–audiences didn’t understand the title’s reference to the phrase Nos morituri te salutamus, or “We who are about to die salute you.”–but I think it also it was a matter of the public’s waning appetite for tense movies about the war. In the early ’60s, we saw a definite down-tick in the number of WWII films produced by Hollywood, alongside a shift to movies with more romance and humor (The Americanization of Emily, Ensign Pulver, Father Goose, and The Sound of Music– I mean come on…singing Nazis? ). We were still making great WWII dramas, to be sure; some of the greatest, in fact, came out of the mid-’60s, such as Judgment at Nuremburg and The Longest Day, but on the whole the WWII thriller was becoming less common.

Into this changing landscape steamed Morituri. Continue Reading »

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Let’s be Bad Guys

10 Dec 2014 by KRAG

Stack of BooksI’m still only at about 80% on the health scale–this head cold is a brute–but there’s a definite upward trend, so I figure I can manage one post this week. A dozen topics have risen to the top, only to slip from my focus, except for one. Luckily, it’s a writing topic, so I can indulge myself.

I think it’s fair to say that my writing has evolved over the years. Some of this evolution has been instinctual, which is to be expected from an autodidact like me. Just as I sometimes know that something works without knowing why it works, so do I just sometimes know that something works better without knowing why. Much of the time, though, I am cognizant of the changes in my writing, as they are the result of a conscious shift. Perhaps I’m correcting a bad habit (e.g., an over-reliance on the Rule of Three), or maybe I’m shifting away from one method or style in favor of another.

But then there are the times when a change has been so subtle that I don’t notice it at all. Such is the case with how I deal with antagonists. Continue Reading »

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Not All Here

03 Dec 2014 by KRAG

Dragons AheadI missed a post deadline (or two), and I’m going to miss some more.

Thanksgiving was interesting. The goose was…well…let’s just say I have a lot to learn about cooking birds that haven’t sat around in a cage their entire lives. Geese seem to have more bones than other birds I’ve parceled out, and they have less meat in some places while more meat in others. Add to that the fact that this free-range goose seems to have used her range quite freely. The meat was tough, leaner than expected, but it was also immensely flavorful. In addition to the meal, I was able to capture over a pint of goose schmaltz, and about ten cups of goose broth.

This was fortuitous, because the day after Thanksgiving, I came down with the worst cold I’ve had in a decade, and that broth is about all I could bring myself to eat.

I’ve been sicker, sure. Like that ruptured appendix I had. That was bad. Had a drain in my gut for two weeks–a suction tube, an aspirator, and a catch-bag–which I dragged around like some parasitic twin and brought out to frighten to sales staff at Fred Meyers. Then there was the Thanksgiving norovirus episode, where my entire family was taken down in a 5-hour period and my wife and I pretty much crapped our way the thousand homeward miles between San Francisco and Seattle. Good times…good times.

But as head-colds go, this one is a monster. First of all, we’ve both got it, and that is never a good thing. Second, it’s a fighter. I can usually kick a cold to the curb within 4 days and usually don’t have symptoms bad enough to warrant a sick day (I can work from home instead). This one, though, wowie-wow-wow. I’ve had it since Friday afternoon–nearly a week–and I don’t feel any better. Aches, pains, coughing, sore throat, runny eyes, bloody nose, headaches, and everything esophageal is so swollen that as soon as I lie down I begin to snore, waking myself up. It takes me an hour or so to fall asleep, and then I wake myself up with the pain and noise, only to repeat the process again.

I am not a happy camper.

Needless to say, this week’s plans have all been trashed as we sit around, sipping hot water and warm broth and honeyed tea, hear our stomachs growl and snarl but we have no appetite to feed them.

Yeah, I’m going to miss another post or two…

k

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Posted in Culture | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

Reinventing T-Day

25 Nov 2014 by KRAG

Simple LivingI don’t like turkey.

This will come as a shock to my family, who as I grew up watched me order a turkey sandwich every time we went out to eat. It didn’t matter where we went or when–breakfast at IHOP, dinner at Denny’s, a special meal at Sabella’s–I always ordered a turkey sandwich. (I was also always served last, but that’s an entirely different story.) I would order the turkey sandwich, the club sandwich, or (in a pinch) the hot turkey open-face sandwich; it didn’t really matter as long as it had turkey.

I loved turkey. Continue Reading »

Posted in Culture, Food | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments »

I’m Sorry, Dave

20 Nov 2014 by KRAG

HAL_9000I’ve finished nine novels, but I’ve probably started a hundred.

Not a hundred different ones. Just the same ones, multiple times. And that’s where I am now.

Starting a project is, for me, a difficult transition. There are so many pivots to make–away from research, away from outlines and characters and structural thinking–and so many habits to suppress, that I get locked up, caught in a loop like HAL9000. Each time I start putting words on paper, questions arise, doubts are sown.

It’s hardest when it’s a brand-new project…like The Wolf Tree, the one I’m struggling with now.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments »

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