Eseme's Den

The directions to a holiday party I am going to include an intersection with a local store.

Hussey's General Store : Shot Guns, Wedding Gowns, Cold Beer

Indeed, they do appear to exist : http://www.husseysgeneralstore.com/

Perhaps I should leave early to experience the wonders?

I have finally gotten some reading time! This is sometimes a distressingly rare thing for me. While Panther was here, I finished Sharon Lee's Carousel Tides.

I've enjoyed it. It is an urban fantasy, I suppose, although the setting is decidedly non-urban (a small town on the coast of Maine that is a tourist mecca in the summer and full of boarded up storefronts in the winter). It is a fun tale, though I must admit it resonated more for me because I have been to Old Orchard Beach (for the book release party). The town in the book is based off OOB, and having seen the town I could envision it full of strange inhabitants and unusual events (I am working on a supremely long travel post about OOB, which will probably be of interest to no one other than me).

As for Carousel Tides:

Kate Archer was the Guardian of the Land in Archer's Beach, until she did something she felt was unforgivable, cut her ties with the Land, and fled to the southwest deserts to slowly die. She reluctantly returns when the management of the Fun Country amusement park inform her that rent on the carousel is past due. And Kate can't reach her grandmother, who should be running the carousel. The carousel needs to be tended to - it is no ordinary carousel, and Kate is not certain she can keep the other-worldly criminals who are bound to it in line. The past returns to haunt her and there are threats, both of this world and of others, taking advantage of the Guardian's absence.

If you use public hotspots, like at Starbucks or your public library, read this.

Someone went and made it easy for people to hack your email and just about any site that uses a login (except banks, which stay encrypted). So email, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking stuff. Heck, even some online shopping like Amazon.

Read about it here:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/11/01/firesheep.wifi.security/index.html

Suggested solutions don't work all the time (forcing HTTPS only works if the site supports it all the time, and VPNS are not easty to set up and slow stuff down):

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/10/26/how-to-guard-yourself-and-your-mac-from-firesheep-and-wi-fi-snoo?cnn=yes

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/five-ways-to-shear-firesheep/283?cnn=yes

While I knew this was possible, I did not know it had been made extremely easy until today. So I figured I'd share.

A book that has been through a washing-machine is a sad, sad thing.

And damp.

I can't decide which is sadder: today's washing-machine book, or the one at the last library I worked at which had been attacked by a dog. The dog's owner brought the pieces in a bag. They were small pieces.

In the case of the washing-machine, it was a brand new book, which had just arrived a couple of weeks ago. It had only been checked out once, to the owners of the washing-machine. There are holds on that Mercedes Lackey book.

I made Pumpkin Soup tonight. There were pie pumpkins at the Farmer's Market last week! It's so early.

So, for a yummy fall treat:

Pumpkin Soup
1 pie pumpkin
Applesauce (I used most of a jar, but you may need less)
Rasins (brown or yellow)
Sunflower seeds (unsalted)
2 crisp apples
spices, as would be put in pumpkin pie
water

Cut the pumpkin in half and seed it. Save the seeds! The recipe for them follows this one.

Place the halves on a baking sheet. I rubbed them with a bit of canola oil. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour. To check doneness, poke with a fork - it should be softened.

Let the halves cool for a few minutes, but not too long. Use a spoon to scoop out the pumpkin goodness into a pot.

Add applesauce. Use more if you want more apple flavor, less if you want more of a pumpkin flavor - there is an art to this, not measurements. This makes a very thick paste. I added water to the pot (though one could use apple cider).

Heat on low to medium-low. Add spices - cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, and cloves. I used up the last bits of my allspice, nutmeg, and cloves. Taste and adjust (I needed more spices, but only hand ginger and cinnamon). Salt and pepper to taste.

Add the sunflower seeds and raisins, and start chopping up the apples. I ended up using one and a half apples, and ate the rest.

Cook until the apples have started to soften. Stir often - I did not need to put the pumpkin in a blender, and the soup was not lumpy.

Serve warm. I ended up with about six servings.


Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Seeds of one pumpkin
Olive Oil
Spices

To soften the seeds, boil them in salt water. I boiled mine for about ten minutes, and I think they are too chewy. I like mine more crisp, so maybe less boiling?

Drain the seeds, and leave to dry on paper towels on a kitchen towel.

Place the seeds in a small bowl and drizzle with oil (I used olive oil). Use your hands to work the oil through the seeds to evenly coat them.

Pour out on a baking sheet. If you time this right, and boil the seeds in the last few minutes that the pumpkin is in the oven, you can drain them while the pumpkin cools, and then use the same baking sheet.

Salt the seeds, and add any spices you want to use (I used garlic powder, but garlic salt or other spices). You could also mix them in with the oil.

Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes or until brown. I needed to stir the seeds midway, and rotated the baking sheet in the last few minutes because one end was browning faster than the other.


Enjoy!

Here's some fun publishing related stuff. Orbit Books apparently pays an intern to look at book covers and write down everything he or she sees.

First, a chart of trends in cover art. This is a chart of objects on the covers of books. Note that next year they will remove "Damsels in Distress" and "Stilettos" as categories. Read more here.

Second, more good news, this time in the form of Urban Fantasy covers. Clothing has gotten more reasonable! See the analysis here.

And they devoted an entire chart to dragons! To find out what colors got some coverage this past year, go here.

Finally, what are popular titles? That intern wrote down every word appearing in a title, and made a cool info graphic. If you think Fantasy is all sweetness and light, well, click here.

The comments are good on all of the blog entries, which is cool.

Also, I have decided to Walk to Rivendell. I've been on the Rail Trail five times this summer that I distinctly remember, and I know I've been there at least three other times. It is a little over two miles, I'd call it 2.15 miles.

So I am 17.2 miles to Rivendell. I am a bit over midway through Day 1, and have left Hobbiton, had a frugal supper, have continued on my way, and have begun to sing while walking through a deeply cloven track between tall trees.

Well, I must have done well. I managed to loose weight while on vacation.

Also, there is a country song for everything. And they get stuck in your head...

I promised an entry on making jam. Then stuff happened and the entry did not.

But now it shall!

I enjoy making jam. I am thrilled when I don't have to buy jam at the store. For a whole year! If I keep making my own jam, I will never have to buy store jam (unless I try that Asian recipe for my slow cooker that uses marmalade).

I first made jam two years ago. I went berry picking twice that year, and made strawberry and blueberry jam. Picking the blueberries was very restful - they were highbush blueberries, and I never needed to bend over to get one. If I got tired of looking at blueberries, there was a lovely view of the valley below me. I learned that I don't really like strawberry jam (I knew I loved blueberry jam).

Last year I moved to Maine in the summer, and was too busy with unpacking and settling in to go berry picking or to make jam. I have been buying jam since then, and found I prefer to have my own.

This year I made blueberry jam first. Normally, I can't do that, as blueberry season is later than strawberry season. But my mother found a food supplier which sells frozen blueberries by the pound for a really good price. So I went down to her house, and we made jam. She also had Ball No Sugar Pectin, which can have 0-3 cups of sugar added. The Low Sugar Pectin I had used previously needed 4 cups (the full sugar version uses around 8 cups and makes about 8 jars, and is tooth decay with berry flavor). We used 1.5 cups of sugar, and made a very nice blueberry jam. We only got 4.5 jars of it, so I knew I needed to make more.

Due to the zany weather we are having, strawberry season and raspberry season overlapped this year. I thought that I could improve the taste of strawberry jam with raspberries. So on the 5th of July (I was off work that Monday), I drove to a local strawberry place and picked (which is always dreadfully uncomfortable due to squatting) and then drove to a local raspberry place and picked. Picking raspberries, like blueberries, does not require bending over or squatting. And I really did not notice the thorns.

That same day, I made strawberry-raspberry jam. I strained the pulped raspberries, so I would not have seeds in my jam. Because I used all my strawberries and added raspberry juice, I ended up with FAR more jam this time. In fact, I had more liquid than the recipe said I would, and I was very worried that since I only had one packet of pectin the jam would not set up and I would have berry soup. Thankfully it does set, just a very soft set and it does separate a bit after you spoon some out of the jar (I just stir it up again later). It is tart and delicious.

Making jam is not hard, though it is time consuming and very warm (heating the fruit, boiling the jars to sterilize, then boiling the jars full of jam to seal them). But it's worth it!

Behold, all the jam I made!




If you cannot see the image, let me know. There are some security settings on my scrapbook I may need to fiddle with.

Because I think Scrivener is the best thing since sliced bread and pizza.

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html

Watch those videos - it can store each scene or chapter as a separate entity which can be accessed from a central screen. It then exports all parts of your manuscript as one RTF file. It will even change the font when you export, and do things like convert italics to underlined.

It also has a second area to store reference material, like images, sound files, PDFs, and websites. You can have a reference picture up in one pane, and your writing in another. These extra files can also be notes. They are not exported when you compile the manuscript.

It can keep track of word count and word goals, and also has a full-screen mode (you can't see anything but the writing).

It's stunning.

I've imported my latest project, and while that took time, I'm pretty sure this is going to speed things up a great deal - no more fumbling between two or three windows.

Oh, and it's a Mac only product, which makes me squee.

I had all these great plans, to post about the jam I made yesterday, with photos. Sadly, that's going to have to wait 'til I'm feeling better.

I went home sick this afternoon, and my car is, yet AGAIN, acting up. This time my fog lights won't turn off (unless I park it with the left-turn signal on). They think they need to replace the stick that controls my lights. This would be the fifth separate car problem I have had in the last four months. It's insane.

So, jam soon, when I'm feeling more optimistic and excited.