Today I thinned the radishes and we actually ate some. They are about the size of walnuts and I am hopeful we will harvest many more. Last year I got one harvest before the groundhog ate the leaves to the ground. This year, with the dog running loose, I am cautiously optimistic that won’t happen.
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Shelby and the groundhog
Hunting the groundhog.
I don’t think she will ever catch the groundhog but she tries hard, investigating every hole and doing her best to push her 60 pound body inside after him.
I must say, last year the groundhog reduced my garden to bare stalks. Since we fenced in the yard and allowed Shelby to run, my garden is untouched.
Las Angeles
On a trip to LA, I had occasion to stop by Murder, Ink, a mystery book store in Huntington Beach, California.
Signing in Murder Ink
While we were there we took a side trip to San Diego and spotted this weird sight.
Writing Process Blog tour
My dear sweet very good friend Dora Machado, a writer who has been generous with both time and expertise, (honestly, I would have had a much harder time understanding the writing world without her) has passed the baton to me for the blog tours. I must answer four questions:
These are my answers.
What are you working on?
I am finishing up a Will Rees mystery that takes place in Salem in 1796. At the same time I am researching my next Will Rees, tentatively titled “A Cold Dish of Murder”. I am simultaneously writing the first draft and doing research. I am also already thinking about the next in the series as well as a stand alone.
Why do you write what you do?
I write historical mysteries because I wanted to write about a period in our country’s history that has been overlooked. I have really learned a lot. I don’t think human nature changes very much and although every culture prohibits murder we seem to do it all the time.
How Does your work differ from others in your genre?
There are a lot of historical mysteries. So far I have found very few that take place after the Revolutionary War and before the 1830’s. And yet this is such a fascinating period. Shadows of the coming Civil War and echoes of the previous war are omnipresent in this period, ships were traveling east to open up trade with China and India and people were moving into the western frontier – there was so much going on.
What is your writing process?
I get up every morning at 5 am and spend the next few hours working on my writing. Sometimes it is blog posts. Some times working on a manuscript. Sometimes sweating over edits. But I try to write every day. I think one of the biggest issue for any writer is making the necessary time.
And now I pass the baton to:
Mary Miley is a historian who, after thirty years of writing nonfiction books and articles, made the leap to fiction. Historical fiction, of course, and mysteries, because that is what she most enjoys reading. Her first Roaring Twenties mystery, THE IMPERSONATOR, won the 2012 Mystery Writers of America BEST FIRST CRIME NOVEL award and was published by St. Martin’s Minotaur in 2013. The second in the series, SILENT MURDERS, will be released in September 2014.
And Will Delman, Will has been writing since childhood and is now beginning to cause a stir in the Science Fiction world.He lives in Salem, Mass with his wife.
http://eleanorkuhns.wordpress.com
Desserts – 18th century style
I use a reproduction of the earliest American cookbook to guide my descriptions of food in my Will Rees mystery series. As discussed in earlier posts, there are not a lot of recipes for the kind of cakes and quick breads we know. Most of the recipes are highly spiced, probably to hide the bitter taste of pearl ash. I am beginning to think that the invention of baking powder should be up there along with indoor plumbing and central heating.
So what did they eat for desserts? Those who say fresh fruit may be only half right. Puddings, as discussed in Dickens, seem to be a huge favorite. The dessert we know and call pudding is actually called custard.Pudding, at this time, was a boiled dessert with sugar and spices. Think plum pudding which is boiled in a form or special cloth and is too sweet and rich for a modern palate. Interesting note: one of the desserts listed is potato pudding!
There are lots of recipes for pie- and without a good leavening agent this makes sense. Also, not only fruit but slices of pumpkin, lemons and other stuffs were put between the pastry layers as were various kinds of meats. I tried the sliced lemon pie and although it is very sugary I found it quite tart. The lemon gel under meringue is a huge improvement. I wonder how the pumpkin pie is since the pumpkin is not pureed but added to the crust in slices.
Those who talk about fat and sugar consumption now should read some of these recipes. Loaf cake starts: Rub 6 pounds of sugar (or fugar in the type set of the times), 2 pounds of lard, 3 pounds of butter, 12 pounds of flour, 18 eggs — well, you get the picture. Obviously this recipe is for loaf cakes for a large group.
One of the desserts we don’t see in the modern US is syllabub. This may have to do with the ingredients. One recipe begins: start with two parts cream to one part wine. Another begns: take a pint of cream and sweeten it to your palate. This dessert is usually drunk. I can only guess at the number of calories. I have had it in England, where it is still consumed as a dessert and it tasted like alcoholic whipped cream.
One element used to lighten some of the baked goods is egg whites, which have to beaten by hand. One recipe says beat for half an hour. If I had to spend this much time beating egg whites my family would never have cake.
More about baking
The replacement for the pearl ash (or pot ash) I discussed in my last post was something called salterus.
Salterus is bicarbonate of soda – yes, the stuff used for stomach acid or whitening teeth. We know it as baking soda and it is the leavening agent in soda bread.
This substance has been known for millenia. The Ancient Egyptians used it as a component of natron, the salt they employed to mummify bodies.
Umm, yummy. Using it for cooking seems more recent. (I read that the Native Americans used it but haven’t found additional documentation for this.) Anyway, baking soda works with something like buttermilk, which has a lot of lactic acid. In chemistry 101, we learn that the combination of an acid and a base yields carbon dioxide and that is what raises the bread.
Baking soda itself is pretty bitter. When I make soda bread I usually use baking powder as well. Pop quiz: what is baking powder? Well, it is baking soda combined with the powdered form of a weak acid but it also leaves less of a bitter aftertaste.
baking in the old days
Since I haven’t seen a workman for my kitchen for ten days (and counting) and I still am missing doors, knobs, and my new refrigerator, I am moving on in my blog.
I began to think about how cooks baked in the past. They had yeast but what leavener did they use for what we term quick breads.
There was no baking powder. They had yeast but that requires rising. Beer dregs can also be used – I;ve made beer bread but you would not want cookies made from beer.
So what did the cooks use? Pearlash. Wood ashes when soaked in water yield lye. Lye is used to make soap. Lye was also used to soak hominey and for other cooking purposes. Some where in 1780 some enterprising cook used it to make cookies and bread.
I’ve read, however, that it left a bitter alkaline taste in the mouth. The use of pearlash was short-lived. After 1840 a precursor of baking powder was produced.
Kitchen coming to the end
After two weeks of nothing happening, several changes occurred in two days and I am now cautiously optimistic that I will not be camping out in my house much longer.
The new appliances arrived. But the fridge was wrong and had to be sent back so we are still using the old one.
You can see the new desk and back splash.
And we finally got counters and water. Yay! No more washing dishes in the slop sink.
Saga 2: Kitchen counters
After a delay of almost a month in getting started, I now have been without a kitchen for 6 weeks and counting. Nothing will be done this week. The place from which we ordered our stone had trouble with the forklift and couldn’t take delivery. I estimate we’ve had about 6 days work in the past 6 weeks. Am I annoyed? You bet.
If you can’t stand the heat …
There’s no getting around the fact that a renovation is stressful. I am really tired of washing dishes in the slop sink. And it keeps going on.
We got the flooring in. A little grayer than I like but still light. 
The same day the flooring went in the stove broke. No kidding. I was baking chicken in the oven and went to take it off and the entire handle came off in my hand. I can still get the oven door open with a potholder but it isn’t easy.
Fried food anyone?
In other news, with the garage door left open so the workmen can bring in flooring, cabinets (arrived but not installed) we have had an army of mice appear. Most recent count: 10. We’ve found dead ones in our closet (yuck!) and in the bathroom. I don’t blame them for wanting out of the cold but I wish they wouldn’t choose my house.