Hearth Cricket

NCW Conference and What’s Coming Up

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:16:00 +0000

As I sat down to write this post there were a gazillion things flying around in my brain. Mostly that was due to the fact that I haven’t posted for a while and there are lots of things I’d like to catch up on.

Weekend before last was filled with all sorts of writing goodness. Much of it revolved around the Northern Colorado Writers Conference at the Hilton, which I mentioned in my last post (two WEEKS ago? Lordy). I had the chance to meet all sorts of new writers from Colorado, Wyoming, and all over the West (waving at Janet from Helena!). I also got to see some old friends, and hang out with others who felt like old friends even though I’d never actually met them in person.

On Friday I talked to a group about how to avoid self-sabotage in writing and other creative endeavors. Much of my research applies to the rest of life as well – information about willpower, decision making, prioritizing, and a lot of other things. So I’ll probably share some of that on Hearth Cricket, just because I’m having a grand old time applying some of the fixes to my own life, and I bet a few other people could benefit, too. I was surprised at how many folks turned up for the workshop, since we hardly ever want to admit how much we can get in our own way. Admitting it is the first step, I hear…

The keynote speaker on Friday night, Jim Davidson, was inspiring as he spoke of how his journey as a writer mirrored his journey as a mountain climber. His recent book, written with Kevin Vaughn, is called The Ledge. It’s his amazing story of tragedy and survival on Mt. Rainier, and I highly recommend it.

On Saturday I led the workshop on character development. At the end we did an exercise which involved addressing characters as unusual (well, mostly unusual) metaphors. It was amazing what the participants came up with. I found myself wanting to read about so many of the characters these writers are working with.

After the conference wound down, I went and wrote in a cafe for a few hours, then went to see my writing group buddies Laura Pritchett and Laura Resau show slides and talk about their recent releases: Great Colorado Bear Stories and The Jade Notebook, respectively. Both are award winning and highly praised authors and it was great to spend the evening with them.

Other than that I’ve been working like crazy every day on Bewitched, Bothered and Biscotti while getting ready for the release of Brownies and Broomsticks. Here is the list of guest posts I’ll be doing in May, and a few more are in the works. My upcoming signings will be listed there soon, as well.

In the meantime, I’m also preparing for the Malice Domestic Mystery Convention at the end of the month where I’ll be on a panel called Witches and Zombies and Ghosts, Oh My!: Paranormal Mysteries. After the convention K and I are going to spend a couple days with friends in Baltimore, so I’ll be in Maryland when Brownies and Broomsticks releases.

On Wednesday I should have a report on this evening’s festivities with northern Colorado’s Bodacious Bookworms, who are wining and dining me as we talk about Wined and Died. With a name like that, this book club can’t be anything but fun!

And on Friday? My recipe for easy peasy but over-the-top decadent brioche cinnamon rolls.

Mmmm…

Stuff This Week

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 02:59:00 +0000

First off, you can enter to win one of 20 copies of Brownies and Broomsticks over at Goodreads until April 17. If you’re new to Hearth Cricket, this is the first Magical Bakery Mystery, a series I’m writing for Penguin/NAL as Bailey Cates. The official release date is May 1, 2012

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Brownies and Broomsticks

by Bailey Cates

Giveaway ends April 17, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

***

On another note, this weekend I’ll be teaching a couple of workshops at the Northern Colorado Writers Conference at the Hilton Hotel in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Friday, March 30, 2012 5:15-6:15
Get Out of Your Own Way – How to Avoid Self-Sabotage

Sometimes writers are their own worst enemies. Come take a look at some of the ways we trip ourselves up, including the three Ps: procrastination, perfectionism, and prioritization. Then we’ll explore several common excuses that stymie our creativity and throw up road blocks to productivity.

Saturday, March 31, 2012, 1:00-2:00
Getting to Know Your Characters

Even the greatest plot falls flat on the page if your characters can’t pull it off. In fiction and creative nonfiction, characters drive a story forward and provide readers access to its meaning and import. Knowing your character’s back stories, fears, goals, and motivations is vital. Come learn techniques to dig into their fictional psyches. You may be surprised by what you find.

***

And finally, I’m finishing up the second Magical Bakery Mystery, Bewitched, Bothered and Biscotti, and in order to get out of my own way as I’ll be teaching on Friday, I’m going to be taking a break from blogging for a little while.

Be back soon, though!

Mini Writing Retreat

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:07:00 +0000

Writing retreats are wonderful opportunities to let go of everyday life and concentrate on writing, writing, writing. You can forget taking care of other people, going to work, paying bills and running errands. For the last four days I’ve indulged in a mini-writing retreat of my own.

Four days is a good chunk of time. Much more than that and you stop feeling like the time is precious. Less than that and you don’t gain enough momentum.

No, my retreat has been “mini” in terms of the actual retreat part because I didn’t go anywhere. K did, however. He’s been in Arizona playing golf and attending spring training games.

Unlike a staycation, which doesn’t really mean anything to me because I work at home and even take work with me when we go on VAcations, a home-based writing retreat does mean some significant changes in routine. Most of these changes reflect my favorite things about other writing retreats I’ve been on.

--No cooking. No cleaning. No yard work. No errands. No phone calls.

--Writing first thing in the morning with no eye on the clock.

--Very little Internet time. Minimal email. Minimal promotion.

--Writing any time and all the time during the day with no eye on the clock.

--Taking breaks by spending time in nature. On other retreats this has included wandering the beach, long walks by the river or on paths through an organic farm. Here I strode the bike path along the river, beside ponds, horse farms, and the butterfly meadow (still too chilly for butterflies, though).

--Solitude during the day – and then spending time in the evenings with other writers. This is a welcome aspect to many writing retreats, and by pure serendipity I had one writers group meeting scheduled for Monday night, and then another for Tuesday night.

--Writing late into the night with no eye on the clock.

--Naps.

--Feeling like I have a quota, a manageable quota in a manageable window of time.

-The ability to focus, focus, focus.

--The luxury of playing with a few new ideas and new project possibilities in the midst of revising my latest book.

I’m happy K is returning tonight. The washer is churning, my to-do list looms, my inbox is groaning, and I know the rest of the week will slide back into a normal routine – which still includes a lot of writing. But it’s been nice, for a few days, to take everything else off my plate. In the meantime, K won’t be home until late, so I’m going to join Minerva on the window seat and set down just a few more words.

Cutting the Mustard

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:11:00 +0000

In ancient times mustard was used more for medicine than as a condiment. Even in more modern times our grandmothers treated chest colds and other ailments with mustard poultices. The chemical heat in the seeds warms and sooths congested chests, relaxes muscles, and opens blood vessels.

But it’s pretty good on a sandwich, too.

To that end, the seeds were mixed with unfermented grape must (hence the name mustard) until the French started mixing them with actual wine and vinegar. Americans in the 20th century Midwest substituted beer for the wine/vinegar.

Though we enjoy all sorts of differently flavored mustard around here, it never occurred to me to try and make some until I ran across this set of recipes on Mother Earth News. They all look pretty easy, so I decided to try the Honey Stout Mustard.

Of course, I made a few alterations. First off, I used a locally brewed porter rather than stout, and that really affected the flavor. In short, it made the mustard more bitter than some people might like. I happen to like the bitter flavor of this porter, which is why we had some in the refrigerator in the first place. So I’m happy with the resulting mustard. Just be sure that if you try this, choose a beer/stout/porter you like to drink.

Secondly, you need a lot of mustard seeds for these recipes – a cup each of yellow and brown for this one (there are also black mustard seeds). You can find them in bulk food bins sometimes, but they’re still pretty expensive to buy like that and it’s hard to gauge how fresh they are. The volatile oils are, well, volatile and evaporate quickly, losing potency. So I added mustard seeds to my last order from San Francisco Herb Company, where I also buy peppercorns, cumin, caraway, chili powder and other herbs/spices/teas at significant savings. So far I’ve never been disappointed by their quality, and I got a pound each of yellow and brown mustard seeds for less the $5 total (plus shipping).

Honey Porter Mustard a la Cricket

1 cup yellow mustard seeds
1 cup brown mustard seeds
16 ounces O’dells Cutthroat Porter (replacing 12 ounces British stout)
3/4 cup cider vinegar
4 small shallots, grated (replacing a small minced onion plus 4 pressed cloves of garlic)
1/4 cup brown sugar (increased from 1 Tablespoon to offset the bitterness of the porter)
1/3 cup honey (increased from 4 Tablespoons to offset the bitterness of the porter)
2 Tablespoons mustard powder (decreased from 1/3 cup simply because I only had that much)
1 teaspoon ground cloves (replacing 1 teaspoon ground allspice)
1 teaspoon of turmeric (increased from 1/2 teaspoon just because I really like turmeric)
1 teaspoon salt

Soaked the mustard seeds in the porter, adding more to cover, for 6 hours. Combined all the other ingredients and heated until reduced by half. Added the mixture without straining (which is why I grated the shallots) to the soaked mustard seeds in a food processor. Processed for nearly five minutes before getting the consistency I wanted. It was thick enough at that point that I didn’t have to cook it down any more, so I simply packed it into sterilized jars.

Mustard is an antibacterial, like honey, so it will keep for a long time on the shelf without any canning or processing. It does lose potency if not refrigerated, though, so I tucked all the jars into the back of the fridge in the garage.

I’d love hear if anyone else tries (or has tried) making mustard. Some of the other recipes on the Mother Earth News site look really good!

Not-So-Fictional Chickens Redux

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:07:00 +0000

Up to my eyeballs in rewrites right now, so I trolled some Hearth Cricket posts from two years ago in March and found this one. The pictures made me smile, so I thought I’d share it with you again. The chickens in my Home Crafting Mysteries appear again in Wined and Died and in the upcoming Deadly Row to Hoe.

********

In Heaven Preserve Us, two brothers are building a chicken pen for my main character, Sophie Mae Reynolds and her housemates Meghan and Erin Bly. By the end of the book they have finished the pen, the laying box, and the roosting house, and Sophie Mae has rigged a transitional incubator for the new chicks in the mudroom off the kitchen.

In Spin a Wicked Web the pullets are happily ensconced in their new home, and have grown enough that they're laying eggs. The chickens are named Molly, Emma, Spike and Henrietta (Hennie).

The hens in the books are modeled after my own chickens. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent. Here is Molly, one day old, under a heat lamp in the guest bathroom bathtub. Unlike Sophie Mae, I didn't have a mudroom.

Molly and Emma were Araucanas, or Easter egg chickens. Molly's eggs were blue. Emma's were green. Spike was a barred Plymouth rock hen, and Hennie a good old Rhode Island red. Both laid brown eggs.

The pen the brothers build in the book is the same pen my girls lived in. Yes, it was a ridiculous amount of space for four hens. Always thought I'd get more. This was the laying box. The top lifts up on hinges for easy access to the eggs. The girls enjoyed hanging out on the side roosts during the day. That's Molly, all grown up, and Spike below. (There's another barred Plymouth rock there who turned out to be a rooster. He went back to the feed store.)

The food station was under the box to protect it from the northwest rain. Only a teenager, Emma wasn't tall enough to reach the feeder, so she's standing on a "booster brick."

I love this A-frame with the criss-crossed roosts. Chickens like to be up in the air when they sleep. If the pen hadn't been so raccoon-proof, we would have shut them in every night. As it was, we only closed the door on the coldest winter nights to retain the warmth from a little light bulb inside.

When the house sold, the new owners were delighted to take over the chickens. I miss them, and hope they're still doing well.

More and more municipalities are allowing residents to keep a few hens (not roosters -- too loud) in the backyard (or front yard). As I go on my daily walks I’ve found more and more chickens tucked alongside houses and even townhomes. And I’m sure one of these days I’ll keep chickens again.

10 Signs It’s Spring

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:08:00 +0000

Even if it’s not yet!

So, in no particular order,

Sleeping with the windows open
Going through a half-gallon of sun tea every day
Dinners hot off the grill and eaten outside
Practicing golf shots in the backyard instead of sitting in the hot tub after dinner
Packets of vegetable seeds on the dining room table, along with grid paper and nursery catalogs
Sore gardening muscles – only from cleanup so far, but still
Outside “office” (Adirondack chair on the back porch) is in daily use
Gathering and organizing tax stuff ; (
Cats shedding all over the house
Pansies and primroses … and crocuses

Mindfulness Quiz

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:21:00 +0000

Do you consider yourself a mindful person? How do you define “mindful?”

I must admit I’ve been spending a lot of time lately trying to be mindful as a way to avoid stress. If I think about all the things on my plate right now and all the things I have coming up in the next few months it can get kind of hard to dive in and get going on what I need to do right now. Heck, it can even get kind of hard to breathe if I give too much attention to it.

So if I can come back to here and now, what is right in front of me, my own breath, the feelings in my feet and body as I walk, how my hands move on the keyboard, the feeling of air on my face, how food tastes and feels in my mouth or the smell of, well, whatever, then I can move forward with purpose and focus instead of being mired in thoughts of things I’m not even doing right now.

Drs. Kirk Warren Brown and Richard M. Ryan came up with the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS).

“The MAAS is a 15-item scale designed to assess a core characteristic of dispositional mindfulness, namely, open or receptive awareness of and attention to what is taking place in the present. The scale shows strong psychometric properties and has been validated with college, community, and cancer patient samples. Correlational, quasi-experimental, and laboratory studies have shown that the MAAS taps a unique quality of consciousness that is related to, and predictive of, a variety of self-regulation and well-being constructs. The measure takes 10 minutes or less to complete.”

A bit mumbo-jumbo-y, but if you’re of a mind, try taking the Mindfulness Quiz here. The higher your score, the more mindful you are.

Why We Love Cheese

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:35:00 +0000

I love cheese. Lots of people love cheese, it turns out. And lo and behold, there is a very good reason for this. Sure there are the awesome, often intense, flavors. The textures. The melty goodness. The way it accents pasta, eggs and fruit. But there's also the PEA.

Phenylethylamine, or PEA, is the love drug. The one that makes us feel giddy and goofy, clouds our judgment and in many ways makes us downright stoopid. Some studies have concluded PEA affects the human brain like cocaine. Brain scans of people in the head-over-heels stage of falling in love resemble those of psychotics. It's strong stuff.

Chocolate contains PEA. That's one of the (many) reasons chocolate makes us happy. But get a load of this: Cheese contains more PEA than chocolate. One study I ran across said ten times more.

And PEA isn't the only drug cheese contains, either. I grew up thinking penicillin came from bread mold. Not so, I eventually learned. Those charcoal blue streaks in bleu cheeses? Yep. Penicillin.

Now, I doubt eating a hunk of bleu cheese would cure an infection, but I'd sure be willing to give it a try.

But wait! There's more!

Cheese made from organic raw milk from grass fed cows contains high amounts of CLAs, or conjugated linoleic acids. These are omega 6 fatty acids vital to health. They're potent anticarginogens, may prevent atherosclerosis, ease inflammation, and even adjust metabolism to increase weight loss. And CLA from animal sources is the easiest for human digestion to access.

That's right. Cheese can be good for your heart and help you lose weight. How crazy is THAT? Plus, it makes you happy, happy, happy..

No wonder we love it!

Not Quite Spring Fever

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:05:00 +0000

I’ve taken to sitting in the window seat in the mornings as the sky pinks with dawn. At hand are coffee, a notebook and my favorite pen, but mostly I sip and watch the birds at the suet feeder. At first the wire cage fell to the ground almost daily, its flimsy chain no match for the weighty red-shafted flickers that will soon wake us each morning with their jungle calls and rat-a-tatting on cottonwoods, gutters, and metal chimney flashing. Finally, we attached an aluminum carabiner as a hanger and have had no problems since. It’s inelegant but effective. That’s okay. I often feel the same way.

The blue jays are a hefty bunch, too, but more rare and surprisingly more polite. A pair of downy woodpeckers visit daily. She is smaller, duller, while his spring plumage is beginning to sharpen up all sexy. Black-capped chickadees wing in between wrens and shiny black cowbirds. Bright-eyed juncos hop and peck on the ground beneath, cleaning up bits dropped from the feeder. I’ve seen robins and mourning doves all winter, but none at the feeder so far.

Last fall I didn’t get to as much of the yard clean up as I would have liked. This was partly due to early snow, and partly to a book deadline. There are, however, always deadlines now. I have one looming shortly. So, as with other big projects, I’ve learned to pick away at the yard work when the weather is nice. Today we are expecting temps in the sixties, and I’ll likely spend an hour pruning the grapes and cutting back grasses before my writing group arrives for dinner this evening.

Yesterday I cleaned out one of the backyard landscape beds, and found the crocus bulbs I’d thrown willy nilly into the ground last spring survived the summer – and the winter – and are bravely poking their green spikes up now. Further exploration revealed fresh buds on the roses, red tulips pushing through mulch, and the green beginnings of hyssop, poppy, and iris.

Spring is indeed right around the corner.

It’s been a bit of a luxury, focusing on writing and developing workshops, playing with new projects and getting ready for my 2012 releases. In the fall I’m so busy “putting up” the garden that winter feels almost lazy in comparison as we delve into the stores and spend long afternoons working while something bubbles away in the kitchen. But the seed catalogs are arriving, and I can’t help but think of readying soil and planting for the new season. At the [slow] rate I’m going each vegetable bed will be ready just as it’s needed.

Early to mid-April will see beets, onions, leeks, radishes, lettuces, kale, chard, carrots, spinach, and cilantro seeds poked into the soil. Soon after, starts for broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower will begin to fill things out. I have hopes but not expectation for the asparagus bed I planted two years ago – with three-year-old rootstock. Last year it didn’t seem to thrive despite a relatively mild winter before and plenty of mulch. So just crossing my fingers and waiting.

It’s not spring fever yet, mind you, but I know that’s on the way. My afternoon walks are still often lit by watery, oblique winter light, and the skies still regularly glower with the threat of snow. March is supposedly the snowiest month in these climes, but it’s hard to tell anymore. Climes, they are a changin’.

So we’ll see, eh?

Seven (Okay, Eight) Local Menus

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:49:00 +0000

Last weekend I was able to get to the winter farmers market and load up on some of my favorite goodies (including greens!) so I set myself the challenge of eating locally for at least a week. Breakfasts run along the lines of small omelets, eggs with toast or homemade yogurt either plain or flavored with jam/syrup, and lunches are generally leftovers from previous meals. Below are the evening meals that hit our plates (or bowls). Unless noted, all ingredients were sourced locally, including some from our freezer.

Sunday
Chicken noodle soup with onions, carrots and sage (no celery, though I think there’s still some from the garden in the freezer)
Beer bread (from market and made with local beer), homemade butter

Monday
BBQed baby back ribs (sauce from the market)
Corn on the cob (frozen last fall)
Cabbage and carrot slaw (vinegar and mayonnaise in dressing not local)

Tuesday
Turkey tetrazzini (used frozen breast leftover from Jodar Farms T-day turkey, homemade pasta, crimini mushrooms from the market)
Green salad with homemade buttermilk dressing

Wednesday
Ham and cheese soufflé with sage (Mr. Ziffel ham leftover from the week before, cheese from the market, dried sage from the garden, local eggs and piima cream)
Green salad for K, spicy braised mustard greens for me

Thursday
Small beef roast (in pressure cooker)
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Buttered green beans (from freezer)
Carrot cake made with honey instead of sugar, and applesauce (Spices, molasses, extracts, not local, wheat flour was from nearby but the white flour was from farther away – but still in-state. The confectioner’s sugar in the cream cheese frosting also wasn’t local, but the butter and cream cheese both were.)

This is a menu straight out of Wined and Died, actually.

Friday (tonight)
Pizza with slow roasted tomato sauce, sausage, green peppers (frozen), mushrooms, black olives (not local, but K’s favorite) and mozzarella
Salad of romaine, napa cabbage, carrots, onions and pickled beets (in the dressing the oil won’t be local, but the vinegar and mustard are both from the market)

Saturday (tomorrow)
Salmon fillet cooked with dill, lemon and butter in an aluminum packet on the grill. (Of course the salmon isn’t from around here, but I got it at the market from a guy who goes to Alaska in the summer, fillets and freezes his catch on the boat, and then brings it back here. The fish isn’t local, but the fisherman is – and oh, my that salmon is good.) (Oh, the lemon isn’t from around here, either…)
Sautéed zucchini (from frozen)
Pasta tossed with brown butter, roasted garlic and basil (frozen)

(Next week the leftover salmon will combine with the leftover mashed potatoes, eggs, parsley, mustard and cayenne pepper for croquettes)

And a bonus:

Sunday I’m planning to make
Chili Relleno Casserole (might buy the chorizo instead of making it – it is made locally, without MSG, but the meat isn’t locally sourced)

This is one of Sophie Mae’s father’s recipes from Something Borrowed, Something Bleu.

Just a few ideas and recipes to share (or rather re-share) with you. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Safe Bubbles

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:44:00 +0000

Last week I expounded on the benefits of cold process soap. Today I’m climbing back up on my soap box – so to speak – to talk about another chemical you might want to avoid.

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate is used in a ton of cosmetic products – some 90 percent of shampoos, almost all toothpastes, and most body washes. It’s a great foaming agent, and a super-duper detergent cleanser. That’s why it’s also used as an engine degreaser, in car washes, and to clean commercial garage floors.

It’s used as a skin irritant in laboratories in order to assess the healing properties of other products. It cleans by corrosion, stripping away lipids in the skin so it can’t moisturize itself. It’s absorbed into the body through the skin, even at relatively small dosages, and a study at the University of Georgia Medical College indicated that it remains in the tissues of the heart, brain and liver long-term. SLS is also pretty hard on the eyes, corrodes hair follicles which impairs the growth of hair (and it’s in shampoos – hello!). It’s a mutagen that actually changes the DNA of skin cells – that’s one reason it makes skin feel so soft.

Unfortunately, SLS is found in nearly all bubble baths. Now, who takes the most bubble baths? Kids, right? Children.

Kiss My Face makes a lot of SLS-fee products, including shampoo and toothpaste, which can be difficult to find. Plus, they have SLS-free bubble bath for kids. Their products are available in natural food stores and in the natural food-and-beauty departments of many major chain groceries.

It’s also pretty easy to m

ake your own safe bubble bath, if you roll that way. One method is to grate a 3 or 4 ounce bar of cold-process soap and melt it in a quart of hot water. Once it’s melted, add 3 Tablespoons of liquid glycerin (yes, the stuff that’s stripped out of commercial soap) and, if you wish, a few drops of essential oil (make sure you – or your child – isn’t sensitive to whatever you choose). You can find liquid glycerin in many pharmacies, especially compounding pharmacies. Or you can buy it from soap making supply sites like From Nature with Love.

Or go old school and don’t use glycerin at all. Instead add a few drops of essential oil and an egg white to 1/2 cup of liquid, SLS-free soap like Dr. Bronner’s or Kiss My Face liquid soaps, or Burt’s Bees body wash (always check the labels to be sure).

The egg white and glycerin both make the bubbles that form under the tap stronger and longer lasting.

[Climbing back down now] ; )

ARC Contest Winners

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:44:00 +0000

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway for the Advance Readers Copy of Brownies and Broomsticks! I wish I could give one to everyone, but unfortunately only have the two. And the winners, chosen by a random number generator, are:

Ally Green

and

Kathleen Genia Gray

Congrats to you both! Please email writerbailey@gmail.com with your addresses, and they’ll go out this week.

Ravioli

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:04:00 +0000

I’ve wanted to make ravioli for a long time. There are different kinds of ravioli makers, from attachments that fit on pasta rolling machines to trays like this:But last year I bought two hand-stamp ravioli cutters, one larger and square, and one small and round. They cost less than $2 apiece. Until now I hadn’t ever used them.

I’d made up a bunch of sausage and wanted to do something different with it. And there are still several butternut squash in the cellar. Finally, I dug around in the freezer and found a cup of homemade ricotta.

After roasting up the butternut squash, I pureed it in the food processor and combined one cup of the puree, the cup of ricotta, and a cup of the sausage (already browned) along with salt and pepper to taste. Yummy.

I mixed up a batch of pasta dough. After it sat for twenty minutes under a wet towel, I rolled it through my pasta maker going all the way down to the #2 setting. Next time I think I’ll stop at #3 because the pasta was so thin and delicate that it was kind of hard to work with.

Still, it was simply a matter of laying out what was essentially a big noodle (about 5 inches by 9 inches), dropping teaspoons of filling far enough apart (I just eyeballed it), laying another big noodle over the top, and cutting out the ravioli with the hand presses.

I boiled them up and served them with the last jar of tomato sauce from the garden (happened to be from yellow tomatoes – so sweet!) heated with a frozen cube of chopped basil, a dollop of heavy cream, and a bit of freshly grated Parmesan.

Yum!

_______________________

ARC Giveaway Reminder

--------------------

I’m giving away two Advance Reader Copies of Brownies and Broomsticks, the first Magical Bakery Mystery I’ve written under the name Bailey Cates. To enter you need to do one of the following (or do more than one and you’ll be entered multiple times).

Follow or subscribe to The Lightfoot Chronicles
Email writerbaileycates@gmail.com if you already subscribe to or follow The Lightfoot Chronicles and want to be entered in the contest
“Like” Bailey Cates’ page on Facebook and comment on the wall
Follow @writerbailey on Twitter
Tweet about The Lightfoot Chronicles and tag @writerbailey so I’ll know

The contest will run until end of day Saturday, February 25, and I’ll announce the winners on Hearth Cricket and The Lightfoot Chronicles on Monday, February 27.

Why Cold Process Soap is Better

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:20:00 +0000

The reason the main character of my Home Crafting Mysteries, Sophie Mae, makes her living by selling handmade soaps and bath products is because for a brief time I did just that. I began making my own soap because I learned a few things about the commercial soaps I’d been using on my skin. Things I didn’t like at all.

Most commercial soaps aren’t soaps at all – can’t even be labeled as such. They are detergents. They contain lathering agents to make them act like soap, along with some other nasties best to avoid, and are anything but good for your skin.

When soap making was industrialized, the most efficient way to make it involved heating it to the point where the glycerin that’s naturally formed during the saponification process separated out. That worked out fine for the soap manufacturers, as glycerin is highly profitable by itself and can be sold to other companies to make lotions and moisturizers – which are now desperately needed since our skin is all dried out by washing it with harsh detergents. Glycerin has a ton of other uses, too.

And those lathering agents? Not great for humans or the environment. Antibacterial and antimicrobial soaps sometimes contain a chemical called triclosan, which is also used in some pesticides and is known to cause cancer. The manufacturers claim the active ingredient continues to work up to twelve hours, so once it’s on your skin it’s staying for a while.

Not just on your skin, either. The ol’ epidermis is a breathing, living thing, after all, and what you put on it is absorbed into the body. This is great if you’re using therapeutic body oils, but not so hot if you’re slathering on products that contain things like phthalates (linked to reproductive disorders in animals and humans but often not even listed on soap and cosmetic labels) and/or parabens (preservatives which have been linked to cancer).

Guess what else? Over time these chemicals have started to leak into the water supply, and they aren’t always effectively filtered out.

This is the kind of stuff that made me start making my own soap. That, and my natural freakish inclination to figure out how things work. Of course I went overboard at first, saving ashes from the woodstove and making my own lye (it sort of worked, but was hard to tell how concentrated the resulting alkali was). And I also started when you could simply wander down the supermarket cleaning aisle and pick up a container of Red Devil Lye. Not so any more. Now you have to order it online.

If you’re interested in making your own soap, I’m planning a simple recipe in an upcoming post. If you’re not a soap making sort and still want to use the good stuff, you might spend some serious money. Like Sophie Mae, lots of people sell luxurious, high quality cold-processed soap online (Handcrafted Naturals is a good example). Farmers markets are also good local sources for handmade soap.

However, whenever I run out of my own soap, I confess to heading straight for Dr. Bronner’s products. They’re easy to find, cost effective, smell great (the peppermint is a real wake up!), are made from simple, organic ingredients and still contain that wonderful glycerin.

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ARC GIVEAWAY REMINDER

Win one of two Advance Readers Copies of Brownies and Broomsticks!

To enter you need to do one of the following (or do more than one and you’ll be entered multiple times).

Follow or subscribe to The Lightfoot Chronicles
Email writerbaileycates@gmail.com if you already subscribe to or follow The Lightfoot Chronicles and want to be entered in the contest
“Like” Bailey Cates’ page on Facebook and comment on the wall
Follow @writerbailey on Twitter
Tweet about The Lightfoot Chronicles and tag @writerbailey so I’ll know

The contest will run until end of day Saturday, February 25, and I’ll announce the winners on Hearth Cricket and The Lightfoot Chronicles on Monday, February 27.

ARC Giveaway

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:48:00 +0000

Anyone interested in receiving an Advanced Reader Copy of Brownies and Broomsticks? As you probably know, it’s the first of the Magical Bakery Mysteries, which I’m writing under the name Bailey Cates. The book won’t release until May, but I have a couple spare ARCs in hand that I’d love to give away.

To enter you need to do one of the following (or do more than one and you’ll be entered multiple times).

Follow or subscribe to The Lightfoot Chronicles
Email writerbaileycates@gmail.com if you already subscribe to or follow The Lightfoot Chronicles and want to be entered in the contest
“Like” Bailey Cates’ page on Facebook and comment on the wall to let me know you did
Follow @writerbailey on Twitter
Tweet about The Lightfoot Chronicles and tag @writerbailey so I’ll know

The contest will run until end of day Saturday, February 25, and I’ll announce the winners on Hearth Cricket and The Lightfoot Chronicles on Monday, February 27.

Good Luck!

Making Sausage

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:34:00 +0000

Since getting Mr. Ziffel (is it wrong that I named the side of pork in the freezer?) we’ve had all sorts of wonderful meals. However, I didn’t order any pre-made sausage from the butcher, instead getting packages of plain ground pork. I wanted to be able to make my own.

Never mind that I’ve never actually made sausage before. I figured that, like making soap or cheese or butter or bread, it probably isn’t hard once you have an idea of what you’re doing. Making hard cheese, for example, can be somewhat tedious, but it’s not actually difficult if you have the right ingredients and know the method.

So I did some research. Most sources said that I needed to add pork fat of some kind to my ground meat. I have a packet of lard – the real stuff, not the hydrogenated stuff in the blue box you sometimes find on the shelf of the grocery store – but after taking a good look at the ground pork that came from Jodar Farms, it looked like it contained adequate fat. If the result was too dry, I’d add additional lard the next time.

Next: the recipe. There are lots and lots online, but I wanted to keep things pretty simple. For one thing, I didn’t want to go to the trouble of using casings, at least not at first. I remembered that in an episode of The Waltons, Aunt Martha Corinne (married to Grandpa’s brother) scandalized Grandma by putting too much red pepper and sage in the breakfast sausage. So those were two ingredients I wanted to use.

Stop laughing.

Sure enough, that was exactly what the recipe called for in my trusty Fanny Farmer Cookbook I’ve had since I graduated from high school. A bit more trolling through cookbooks I already owned, and some thinking about what kind of flavors I wanted, and I decided to add lots of black pepper, a bit of sage, and a dash of allspice. For breakfast sausage (sizzling above) I also dolloped in a some maple syrup. For a more savory option (used on pizza), I added toasted fennel seeds crushed in a mortar and pestle. For extra moisture I added a bit of cream or wine respectively.

I did it all by feel and instinct, so I can’t really offer a recipe here. So far I’m pretty pleased with the results, and plan to try a few more variations.

Anyone have suggestions?

Deadly Row to Hoe Cover

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:52:00 +0000

Here’s the official cover for my sixth Home Crafting Mystery, Deadly Row to Hoe. Yay! I’m really excited about this revamp! The book will release this November.

Looks pretty different from the previous covers in the series, doesn’t it? This is the direction all the covers will be going from now on, and the earlier books will likely change over to this illustrated style in subsequent printings.

Now don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love the wonderful, clean photographed covers put together by Midnight Ink’s Lisa Novak. She captured the clean, spa feel I wanted for a series featuring a woman who makes her living making soap and bath products.

However, the home craft featured in in Deadly Row to Hoe is vegetable gardening, specifically a community supported agriculture farm. Another photographed cover would have probably involved vegetables, and a few people have already commented that the books look a bit like cookbooks – despite the fact that one has soap and bath oil on the cover and another is all about fiber and yarn. Granted, though, a lot of traditional colonial home crafts involve food. ; )

So this illustration captures the whole farm (and even includes a mountain that looks a lot like Mt. Rainier in the background – how cool is that?).

Many thanks to Midnight Ink for making this change, and to Lisa for spearheading the mockup and finding the illustrator!

Change is good.

From Sun to Snow

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:09:00 +0000

We arrived home at midnight from a week in Cozumel, Mexico, going from soft tropical air to 11 degrees F and the threat of snow. At least we missed the big storm that caused multiple accidents, closed schools and canceled flights at Denver International Airport.

I awoke at 4 a.m. on the day we were traveling back to the States and wandered out to the balcony to see the full moon setting over the ocean. Half an hour later I went back to bed, but I’m so glad I had the final chance to sit and watch the light play across the water while listening to the waves crash below.

It rained a lot while we were in Cozumel, but mostly at night which meant cooler (and damper) days. I played a round and a half of golf while K played three. The other half of the time he spent on the Nicklaus designed course – also an Audubon sanctuary – I sat on the beach and worked.

Players lose a lot of balls on that course. Some go into the mangrove jungle, and others into the water. You have no hope of finding the ones that go into the jungle, and the crocodiles make it inadvisable to pursue the ones that end up in the water. This guy was about eight feet long.

Right now I’m finishing one book, editing another, and polishing yet a third that I’ve been working on for a long time. I have a proposal in the works that I get to when I have a spare moment, write two blogs and contribute to a third. While in Mexico I read two books people requested blurbs for and and critiqued writing submissions from one of my writing groups.

There is no such thing as a non-working vacation for me right now. That’s okay. I love what I do, and I’m fine with spending some of my time on the beach doing it. I mean who could complain about that? All that water, the constant shooshing of the waves all night long, and freedom from so many of my usual responsibilities made for deep sleep, relaxing days, and the re-energizing I needed in the depth of winter.

Now that we’re back it’s soup and stew and warm bread by the fire, but the memory of all that fresh seafood – shrimp, grouper, red snapper, lobster, conch, squid and octopus ceviche, crab and even shark – lingers on.

Still: Here’s to getting back to the normal routines!

Texas Sheet Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:42:00 +0000

Several years ago I asked family members to send me two or three of their favorite, go-to recipes so I could compile a cookbook. Dishes people requested, that they often took to potlucks, proven winners.

The results were better than I could have hoped for. Almost a hundred recipes went into a fifty page book which I had printed and then sent out to all the contributors. Good recipes. Excellent recipes. I use that cookbook a lot, and I’ve already shared some of my favorites on Hearth Cricket.

Here’s another one, from my second cousin’s wife. She originally got it from a San Antonio newspaper. It’s great for a crowd – especially a crowd that loves chocolate. And pecans.

Texas Sheet Cake

2 sticks butter
1 cup water
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine butter, water, and cocoa powder in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook at a simmer for two minutes. Add flour, sugar, salt, and blend well. Remove pan from heat and beat in eggs, sour cream, baking soda and vanilla until smooth. Pour batter into a greased and floured 10”x15” pan (I use a tall 9”x13” pan) and bake in a preheated 375 degree F oven for 25-30 minutes or until a cake tester can be removed cleanly. (Size of pan and altitude might increase baking time.)

Allow to cool in the pan, on a rack. Spread frosting over the cake in the pan, while still slightly warm.

Frosting

1 stick butter
1/4 cup cocoa powder
6 Tablespoons milk
1 pound confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans.

Using the same saucepan as for the cake (don’t even have to wash it), combine butter, cocoa and milk. Bring just to a boil and let simmer one minute. Remove from the heat, add the sugar, vanilla and chopped nuts. Mix well.

Best thing with this cake? Vanilla ice cream, of course!

We Have It Easy

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:47:00 +0000

Today is a long travel day, so I’m reposting this from October of 2010.

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I’ve tried many times to explain why I’m so interested in colonial home crafts. Truth is, there are many reasons, but I often cite the increasingly technological world around us as the primary one. Still, I’ve knitted, crocheted, cooked and baked since a very early age. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series had a deep impact or me – or did it? Which came first, my interest in how people lived a century or so ago or reading about them?

Two women sharing the housework in the late 1800s
Photo courtesy Library of Congress

Whatever sparked my interest, do not think I’m trying to romanticize the tasks that, frankly, made life pretty darn hard back then. A typical woman’s life in the late 1800’s consisted of work from dusk ‘til dawn. Work done without modern conveniences like standing mixers, washers and dryers, vacuum cleaners or even refrigeration. In urban areas she might also hire out to do housework, laundry, sewing, or work in a factory. In the country, she not only cared for her home and fed her family meals fixed from scratch every day on a wood-burning stove, but grew much of that food, sewed, knitted, spun and wove to make clothing for her family, cared for children – and livestock – and often helped her husband with other farm chores. She sometimes made a little extra income for the family by selling extra butter or eggs from her flock.

Multitasking? Hardly a recent concept. And not only did she have to work her tail off, she had to perform her tasks really well. Survival might depend on it.

I do, perhaps. romanticize the actual colonial skills. The ability to make your own clothes, grow and cook your own food, or build a piece of furniture from scratch is amazing to me. The idea that these basic abilities might be lost is tragic. But with the resurgence of interest in many different home crafts, that loss is unlikely to occur. In fact, because of the luxury of being able to specialize, some creative souls have taken traditional home crafts like cheese making, quilting, baking and knitting to new heights, offering delectable artisan foodstuffs and beautiful pieces of artwork.

But make no mistake: We are incredibly fortunate to have the technology that we do.

“Part of the family of George Padroni, near Sterling, Colo. They have 9 children and some hired help. Only one child in school …This is 6 yr. old Lena, who works some too. The 8 yr. old boy pulls and piles beets. 9 and 12 yr. old boys run the pulling machine, (the mother said, "We all got to do all we can.") 11 yr. old girl piles and tops and does housework. 13 yr. old girl piles and tops. Says she hasn't hurt herself with the knife this year, but did last year. The whole family begins work from 5 to 6 A.M. and works until 6 P.M. and after, with time off for dinner. Pedroni has been living here for 20 yrs., owns several hundred acres, about 100 in beets. Is said to be well-to-do. Location: Sterling [vicinity], Colorado.”

Photo courtesy Library of Congress

Yesterday I made spaghetti from scratch. I made the noodles from egg-and-flour dough. Made the sauce from garden tomatoes cooked down, pureed, and then cooked down for four more hours with handfuls of herbs, chopped onion and celery, and a bit of brown sugar. The meatballs originated as a tired roast from last year’s beef, ground and added to bread crumbs, egg, garlic and basil.

Still, that was easy peasy compared to a hundred-plus years ago. I used a standing mixer to whip up the pasta dough, and then the pasta attachment to extrude the spaghetti. I used the grinding attachment to grind the meat, a convection oven to brown the meatballs, a blender to puree the tomato sauce, and a gas stovetop to slowly cook that sauce down. Not to mention the dishwasher.

Believe me, I appreciated every hard-worked-for bite of the finished product. But as much as I enjoyed making that meal from scratch, I did it by choice. I also washed and dried four loads of laundry with hardly any effort at all. Vacuumed the house. Watched a football game and still had time to edit two chapters and begin reviewing a friend’s manuscript.

The best of both worlds. Talk about lucky!

When Life Gives You Lemons

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:51:00 +0000

Try using them like this:

As a stain remover. Tea stains in particular respond to a mild soap solution boosted with lemon juice. It also works on stains from coffee, blood, and ketchup, on clothing, plastic, cutting boards and furniture.
To speed up your metabolism. The acids in a glass of lemonade each day helps stomach acids break down food even better – and faster. Over time it will increase the efficiency of your digestion and increase your metabolic rate.
To shine china and metal (especially copper). Mix lemon juice with a little soap, scrub and then buff. Much greener than chemical solutions.
To relax. Studies have indicated that the smell of lemon promotes relaxation and a happier state of mind.
To disinfect. I recently mentioned running a slice of lemon over a wooden cutting board will sanitize it, but you can use lemon juice to clean counters and even add it to mop water.
To soothe a sore throat. Mixing the juice of half a roasted lemon with a teaspoon of honey is an old remedy for sore throats.
Brightening whites. Just as bleach removed stains (sometimes) and sanitizes, so will adding a half cup of lemon juice to a normal-sized load of (white only!) laundry.

Really Local Lasagna

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:26:00 +0000

The fact that we try to eat as locally as possible doesn’t come as news. Usually it’s not too tough – I get our meat, eggs and milk products from local farms, hit the farmers markets, Beaver’s Market carries lots of locally produced sauces, cheeses, etc, and I grow many of our vegetables which I “put up” for winter consumption.

Throwing a piece of meat on the grill, roasting a chicken, stewing up a mélange of this ‘n’ that based simply on what’s available in the fridge, pantry and freezer – all that’s pretty low-key. But last weekend I had a craving for lasagna. Gathering the ingredients I was surprised that I could make it with all local, and many handmade ingredients.

There was grass-fed beef in the freezer. That, along with onion from the farmers market, celery from the freezer, garlic and dried basil from the garden, parsley from the pot in the window and two pints of my tomato sauce, made up an approximation of Bette Jane Sauce.

Every two weeks or so I make up some kind of cheese from our dairy deliveries (we get half a gallon of whole milk a week, along with a quart of half-and-half – for coffees and cooking – and a quart of heavy cream that ends up as cultured butter and buttermilk). In the freezer I found a pint of homemade ricotta (in the strawberry container above) and two balls of mozzarella (in the plastic bag).

The bonus was that last time I made pasta I was in a hurry and ended up just slicing big lasagna noodles and allowing them to dry. The eggs and flour in that pasta were both locally sourced.

If I had tried to make all of that from scratch at once, it would have taken all day. Literally, ALL DAY. But because I made the ingredients ahead of time, over time, as part of my regular routines, the lasagna only took about half an hour of prep time once everything was thawed.

We ate it with a fresh farmers market salad. It was the kind of meal that isn’t possible all the time, but when it is, I find myself savoring each bite with unparalleled concentration and appreciation.

Wooden Cutting Boards

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:28:00 +0000

I love my wooden cutting boards. Because they were once growing things rather than a slab of plastic made of petrochemicals, I tend to believe the studies that say wood is superior. This is a personal bias, of course. There are pros to using either.

Seriously, though – how cool is this: Wood is porous, so there’s a wicking process which draws bacteria inside the wood, leaving the surface germ free. Then on top of that, wood has natural antimicrobial properties which then self-clean both the interior and exterior of the board. In other words, the wood that was once alive is, in a way, still alive and kicking bacterial ass.

I like that.

However, it needs to be a wood other than white ash or maple. For some reason those particular woods don’t have that anti-microbial thing going on.

Plastic, on the other hand, is dishwasher safe and therefore very easy to thoroughly sanitize. Putting a wooden cutting board into the dishwasher will flat-out ruin it. Restaurant kitchen have to use plastic cutting boards for this reason.

Scrubbing a wooden cutting board with hot, soapy water cleans it very well, but if you’re still worried, slice a lemon in half and swipe it over the surface. The acid in the lemon will kill more germs than bleach. Or if you don’t have a lemon, or don’t want to use it, you can also wipe the board down with cider vinegar.

Do not leave wooden boards soaking in water, though. The porosity that allows the wood to wick away bacteria will also make it soak up water. Soaking it in water will make it dirtier, not cleaner.

And allow your cutting board – wooden or plastic – to dry completely. In the absence of heat and moisture any remaining bacteria will die within a few hours.

Finally, wooden cutting boards need a little love on occasion. I wipe mine down with olive oil, but any edible oil will work. The dry surface soaks it up, knife marks are reduced, and the grain of the wood really pops.

Functional AND gorgeous!

Mindfulness Reminders

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:26:00 +0000

Peace can only exist in the present moment. It is ridiculous to say “Wait until I finish this, then I will be free to live in peace.” What is “this”? A diploma, a job, a house, the payment of a debt? If you think that way, peace will never come. There is always another “this” that will follow the present one. If you are not living in peace at this moment, you will never be able to. If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now. Otherwise, there is only “the hope of peace some day.”

--Thich Nhat Hanh, The Sun My Heart

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R.S. Thomas, Collected Poems

Crab Quiche

noreply@blogger.com (Cricket McRae) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:47:00 +0000

Friends dropped by last night, and I invited them to dinner. However, I’d been immersed in the business of wordsmithing for most of the day and hadn’t really planned anything. Fortunately, we had the ingredients for this quiche (or close seconds – I grabbed some grated zucchini out of the freezer and used red onion instead of the green onion). It and a salad whipped up quickly and I was able to spend more time socializing than cooking.

The recipe came from my aunt, who suggests serving it for brunch. You can find canned lump blue crab meat in the refrigerator section of most chain grocery stores, and certainly at places like Whole Foods. That same crab meat also makes fabulous crab cakes, by the way.

It ain’t local, but sometimes I really miss all the dungeness crab that was local when I lived in the Pacific Northwest. If you have access to that, it’s easy enough to crack one up and use the meat in this quiche. Blue crab is slightly different, perhaps a bit sweeter. You could also use regular canned crab meat (next to the canned tuna), shrimp or cut up prawns.

Crab Quiche

1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons flour
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup milk
1 cup crab meat
1 cup grated Swiss cheese
1 cup diced zucchini
1/4 cup chopped green onion
1 unbaked pie crust

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl, beat together eggs, mayonnaise, flour and milk until thoroughly blended. Stir in crab, cheese, onion and zucchini. Spread into pie shell. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Sometimes I just butter a pie dish and don’t bother with a crust at all. It’s a way to reduce calories and carbs and still tastes great!