My go-to dish for pot-lucks is Tee’s Corn Pudding, from the 2003 Southern Living cookbook. I had to take something to my daughter’s Thanksgiving Feast on Tuesday. While I was locating that recipe, I came across a recipe for Hazelnut Truffles. The recipe looked easy enough – heat ¾ cup of whipping cream, add 1 cup of chocolate, 1 tablespoon of butter, 2 tablespoons of hazelnut liqueur, chill at least 2 hours, roll 1” size balls in melted dark chocolate, then in ground toasted hazelnuts. Simple. Anyone can do that. I had visions of taking beautiful handmade truffles to Christmas parties. I would be asked, “Where did you get those delightful confections?” and I would reply “Oh, those little ole things? I just whipped them up before we came.” I looked in the wet bar. No Frangelico. There was a little bit of amaretto, some ersatz Bailey’s Irish Cream (tasted like lighter fluid – most of bottle still there 5 yrs later), a few whiskeys and some Triple Sec. I went with my Final Item Thanksgiving Feast grocery list to HEB. The only hazelnuts I could find were in the mixed in-shell nuts, and I think I would have had to buy 10# of them to get 1 cup of shelled hazelnuts. I decided on Triple Sec for the inside with melted cinnamon chip coating, rolled in coconut. I made the ganache yesterday, thinking that rolling the truffles would be a fun thing my daughter and I could do today. While the ganache tasted sublime, it was the consistency of chocolate sauce. I added more chocolate chips (twice) and it never got quite thick enough to work with. I send my husband to Kroger for confectioner’s sugar and diapers (unrelated items). I added the powdered sugar and added it and added it. I think this must have been the world’s lumpiest powdered sugar, because when I finally got the chocolate to a thick enough consistency that I could roll it into a ball, I found a number of crack rock sized chunks of sugar embedded in my truffles. In the mean time, my melted cinnamon chips were rapidly congealing, so I had to kind of pack the coating on. At least the unloveliness of the truffles is disguised by the coconut (but they have inner beauty!) and they taste alright. Really, nothing with 1-1/2 bags of chocolate chips and ¾ cup of whipping cream is going to taste bad. It’s nearly 12:30. Maybe my pumpkin pies (yes, I had only intended to make 1) will be cool enough to cover and put in the fridge. I had bought pie shells last shopping trip. The recipe I stumbled onto called for 3 cups of pumpkin. I had a gallon and a half of fresh pumpkin in the fridge, because my daughter wanted to cut up a pumpkin to make pie, so 3 cups was a good thing, although it didn’t make much of a dent. The recipe also called a 10” deep dish pie shell. It filled the two 8” shells and a ramekin. At least I remembered to put the Tofurkey in the fridge to thaw this morning. Now that my delusions of culinary grandeur are shattered, I think I will stick with the corn pudding.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Monthly Archives: November 2008
The Cat Broke My Internet!
The mystery of the missing dial tone is solved. There is a large piece of artwork that hangs over our couch. It is a 3-D affair with cave-style painting of horses and it has some arrowheads in little compartments. Dear little Friendly decided it must be a mysterious lair to be explored, and he tried to climb into it. The thing came crashing down and the kitten went racing, with flue-brush tail, into the other room. It occurred to me, of course, only after two separate half-hours in an electronic call routing maze and camping out on hold, that the phone jack is in the vicinity of the fallen picture. I climbed over the couch and there was the crushed DSL filter, still plugged in, keeping the line open. Problem solved.
The BV conference was very good, as usual. Kudos to Liz Mertz, the BV SCBWI RA, for doing an excellent job. I was very pleased with my critique. Cynthia said she thought my manuscript was probably one draft away from publishability, and that I needed to dig down to pull it up a level. She recommended some agents she thought would be interested in it. She also said that she felt I had real talent, so I was over the moon about that. We talked about other writing things, like branding (she has three different publishers and writes very different things for each), and what happens if we move to Norway. Another thing she said is that there is a dearth of good MG out there – she was trying to think of her top 10 MG books for 2008 and she couldn’t think of more than 8.
Conventions of any sort always include a variety of interesting characters. There was one lady there who was convinced that she knew me, and I was equally convinced that she did not. Not surprisingly, SCBWI has a huge contingent of both active and retired school teachers and librarians. People under 30 at these types of events are uncommon. And yet, next to me, sat a young man who appeared to be a college student. He didn’t take notes and fidgeted through the whole thing. Which made me wonder why he was there. Lose a bet? Class project? Real interest/photographic memory? Had to drive his mom? There’s a writing exercise right there.
An-tic-i-pa-tion…
My internal power supply on my laptop cratered last Wednesday night. I was sure I had bought the service plan when I got it at Best Buy, but they claimed I hadn’t. They said it would cost “about $200” to fix it. I took it back home and did some internet research. First, I thought maybe it was something I could fix myself. After all, I’ve replaced motherboards and hard drives, and installed CDs. When I found a “how-to” it started out, “first, take the soldering iron…” I searched for a local shop. I found a place called Top Tech Experts (not far from my daughter’s school) who said they would do it for $125. I dropped it off on a Friday afternoon. When I spoke with Alex there on Monday, he said they’d ordered a part for it, and it should be ready Wed or Thurs. I told him I really had to have it by Thurs and Wed would be better. They took it apart and changed some connectors and voila! It worked. I picked it up Wed afternoon. They seemed knowledgeable and professional, and I would use them again. And since they didn’t use the part (which hadn’t arrived by Wed), they only charged me $100. (Prices I found on the internet ranged from $99 + S/H to $145 S/H included).
In the mean time, some construction activity severed/damaged the telephone trunk line on Tuesday afternoon. No landline, no internet. The phone company helpfully said it should be fixed on Thursday between 8 AM and 7 PM. Thank goodness for Starbucks and their wifi hotspots!
Saturday is the Brazos Valley conference. I’m really excited about it. There are 3 of us from my CG going, and we’re going to carpool. I’ve got my copy of Tantalize ready for autographing (I may even take an extra pen). That and I’m really interested to see what Cynthia Leitich Smith has to say about (the first 10 pp) of my Earthbound manuscript. Hope it doesn’t turn out to be a case of ‘Be careful what you wish for.’