Black-eyed Pea Cornbread

When you're new you need to make a good impression. Our newest critique group member, Sharon, baked up a batch of cornbread tasty enough to make your mouth water in front of a civil war campfire or sitting around an array of laptops readying for a critique group read.

This bread is a nice compliment to the Stred Soup recipe shared yesterday.

Black-eyed Pea Cornbread

1 tsp. butter
1 lb. fresh loose spicy pork sausage meat (Sharon used Jimmy Dean’s regular sausage log)
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped
Two boxes of Jiffy Corn Bread/muffin mix*
8 oz. cheddar cheese, grated (about 2 cups) (Sharon used a Mexican cheese blend)
1 15-oz. can black-eyed peas, drained
3/4 cup canned cream-style corn
1⁄2 cup canned chopped green chiles
1⁄2 cup drained sliced pickled jalapeños, chopped

* Sharon uses two boxes of jiffy corn bread/muffin mix instead of the making the corn bread. Saves a little time.

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease a 9" × 13" baking dish with butter and set aside. Break sausage meat into chunks and put into a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and cook, breaking sausage up with a slotted spoon, until meat is lightly browned and just cooked through, about 10 minutes. Transfer sausage and onions with the spoon to paper towels to let drain.

2. Follow the direction on the box to make the cornbread, You’ll be using two boxes so double the amount of eggs and milk required (she recommends half and half ). Stir in sausage mixture, cheese, black-eyed peas, corn, green chiles, and jalapeños. Pour batter into prepared dish, smoothing top with the back of the spoon. Bake until golden brown, 50–60 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Sharon, can you leave the ingredients a baker would need to gather for the cornbread mix and leave them in the comments?

While we wait, leave a comment on the last time you asked a neighbor to borrow something to complete a cooking mission, and what was it?!

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Stred Stew

This recipe created by critique group member Pam for our recent potluck. The incredible fragrance of beets and sausage floated through the kitchen and we all murmed: mmmm. Of course, it took attention away from the delish kimchi I brought: fiery orange, overripe, pickled cabbage, reeking with garlic, exploding with enough hot to knock you out when you merely passed within proximity.

Stred Soup
 Cook together for 45 min to an hour:

· Juice of 1 lb can of pickled beets
· 3 cans beef broth (add water – optional)
· ¼ cup margarine
· 1 medium onion (chopped)


Add:
· the beets – cut up
· 1 tart apple – chopped
· 1 lb. polish sausage – or a little less (optional)
· 1 lb (approx) cut up red cabbage

Cook all for about 20 minutes more.

Get the stew cooking, and tomorrow I'll give you the recipe for the Black-eyed Pea Cornbread.

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Luck is finding at least one friend who can cook

Good luck is getting to eat what they cook.

Our critique group hostess, Pam, tasked our members to dig deep into our artistic talent and create a food that represented our novels for an end of the year potluck. I knew it would be a good event, tasty even. I also knew I'd bring something that wouldn't be tasty, whether I baked it or not.

The night of the event, Ginger flounced a plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—the lunch served at summer camp—on the buffet table and launched into a story of how she had to convince her two-year old they were not meant for her. Two-year olds are not easy to dissuade when they are intent on a goal. I can say in complete admiration, Ginger succeeded in keeping teeth marks out of most of the sandwich squares.

Peggy entered with a shy giggle and waited for us to notice her blond locks had been sheared into a cute bob. Peggy's holiday dishes magically appeared out of her Nordic themed, fantasy YA novel. I checked carefully to see what delicious magic might be lurking inside her serving dish and was not disappointed—Swedish meatballs with a jar of pickled herring thrown in on the side.

Melanie proclaimed she'd brought the essence of good taste: rat turds (formally known as rum balls that require a breathalyzer before carting yourself home). She'd shipped them directly from the brigantine that sails the Atlantic Ocean in her adventure novel. I will include a picture, but you must sign an affidavit that any damage this does to your chocolate-loving-psyche will not be blamed on Pearl of Carol.

3..2..1.. Quick peek. You okay?

Sharon, our newest member, was a bit overwhelmed, she had not met a couple of our members who have been on hiatus due to family responsibilities. She nobly placed her black-eyed pea corn bread at the end of the table with a large serving spoon, which was an excellent idea (the big spoon), because the dish was GOOD. Her cornbread was a staple during the Civil War which her female protagonist is currently fighting.

Of course, I went back for seconds of everything, and if I'd thought ahead I would have brought take-out containers, especially for Pam's stew. Pam delved into Lillian Parsley's cookbooks, one of her characters who operates a restaurant in a fictional town along the Columbia River.

Pam is an unbelievably generous friend who actually hosts our group in her home every week. Anyone who has tried to organize a diverse group of women will know that consistency is the key to success, i.e., meet consistently at the same time and the same place. If we have to stop and think, where are we this week, the plan will fail.

Pam is the only member able to keep her house clean each week. We like to think that is because she is RETIRED, but she may possess other organizational skills that I don't. (I swear, as soon as I finish writing this manuscript I'll clean again. Really. Well, I want to believe that will be occur, so let's pretend).

Pam's generosity knows no bounds. She has offered to leave her door unlocked for us when she goes out of town, which we appropriately decline. Her neighbors keep a close eye on the condo grounds (which means they report on me if I drive through too fast), and they would surely chase us all us out should we appear while Pam is away. In fact, one would delight in calling the police in revenge for a broken Japanese maple branch that we were blamed for, but honestly, heavy rain, wind, snow are way more powerful than women who write. Okay, that's debatable, but we didn't do it.

At the party, while everyone was busy chatting, I slunk over to the stove and peeked in Pam's pot. I was comforted by fragrant aroma of Stred Soup, a stew of beets and sausage.

Precisely because I don't cook I was required to purchase my dish. I wasn't sure if one offering would be enough for the potluck so I did bring something completely edible, cheese and crackers arranged just the way my character does in The Inbetween Pearl, "triangle ends pointed to the edge of the plate."

The other dish I brought was the event of the evening. You don't find this food everywhere, or anywhere for that matter. You have to know someone Korean to procure it (both of my novels follow a University of Washington sophomore who marries a Korean-born California real estate developer). Second, you have to insure the product will be available. I visited Oriental Fast Bowl on Monday to confirm my order for the Thursday event.

The nice Korean proprietor smiled and nodded her head when I posed the question, "Will it be available?" Someday, when I am brave, I will tell her she is the person I describe when I created my protaganist's mother-in-law, but it will have to be when her English speaking son is helping in the restaurant so he can translate, and it will have to sound like a compliment, because in A Single Pearl, it is not a compliment.

The proprietor and I agreed on a pick-up time, and I didn't worry the rest of the week about the dish...just the reaction to the dish.

Although it was in protective plastic container I smelled it during the entire drive to Pam's house. Garlic. Fire Colored. Pickled Vegetables. I wanted to have enough for everyone, and although I'd asked for a large portion, Mrs. Korean-Restaurant-Owner shook her head no and refused to sell me anything except the smallest portion, asking, "You like?"

I assured her that I did, "Every once in awhile." She raised an eyebrow in disbelief but took my money.

Kimchi. It's not bad. It's different.

Leave a comment if you would like me to post recipes!

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I'm friendly but I have rules

I took a Saturday class, ‘Hands on Small Business,’ to understand how businesses can take advantage of social media. I dabble in what I thought was everything and wanted to see what I might be missing. Plenty. I received an introduction to Office Live, strolled through Kirtsy, and helped my proximity partner understand a bit about Twitter.

Twitter I get. I’ve got like a bazillion accounts. Well, two, me and my twin. She’s all about business, I’m all about fun.

When you’re a small business, your biggest issue is cash flow. Social media allows a small business, (and what is a writer other than a small business?) to reach beyond a geographical location (your butt in a chair in front of your computer getting inspiration from other writers). It offers ways to collaborate with professionals (publishing peeps), and research experts to pimp your publishable stuff (agents).

Social media allows you to jump in the stream without an outlay of cash.

The class taught us to use cloud computing (use products that don’t land on your laptop or your server). This stuff lives out there in the netherland and is managed by someone else. It is at this point I wish I had a lot more complicated words so I could really impress you that it was a hard class, and that I’m really smart. Just pretend: It was a hard class, I am really smart.

Katherine Gray, the teacher, is a ten-year veteran of online marketing. She is a social media maven who consults on web-design, site architecture, and she is a content strategist. In her Twitter life she is @thiskat and @dirttodish. (Oh, and @dirttodish is about food. Remind me not to cook any of her recipes. That is a two-way joke. I don't cook).

Katherine is really smart, and she makes it happen by being a woman mentoring other women, and finding sponsors like Microsoft who pitched in a prize: Office Small Business ($449.95 value). Katherine had a drawing. I didn’t need win. Here is where we pretend I am smart, an excellent student, and lucky.

Since we’re pretending, we shall also say I am a twitterable expert, and I will share what I have learned after posting 2,000+ tweets.

When I become a bit more adept at Office Live and Kirtsy (holding out for prizes here) I’ll post my experiences.

Twitter. Let’s define the basics.

Definitions:

RT = retweet, this is copying someone’s tweet. It appears like this:

RT @TheFirstCarol: she said blah blah blah (You may enter your twitter account and copy this exactly as written. I won’t mind and I might follow you).

The RT credits whoever originated the thought. People who originate thoughts appreciate when you repeat their words and give them credit. This is the smile factor. Make someone smile.

@ = The @ sign is coding. It comes before someone’s twitter name, it highlights their name. (Here’s the complicated stuff, so pay attention…).When you start a tweet with someone’s name @theFirstCarol, for example, only TheFirstCarol will see your message, and anyone who both you and TheFirstCarol follows. This excludes everyone who does not follow both of you.

.@ = The .@ preceeded by a period .@theFirstCarol, allows everyone who follows you to see what you are writing. This is inclusive.

If you want to see everyone who is talking about to you in a stream (on your wall), look on the right hand column of the Twitter screen and click on the words @theFirstCarol (or whatever your name on Twitter is). This will gather all the messages in a stream. This will make you feel good.

DM = direct message - this is like sending an email, only the recipient sees a DM message. It never appears in your twitter stream and it does not appear in the sender’s stream. To view a DM, the recipient needs to be on their ‘Home’ page they have to click on the words ‘Direct Message.’ To the right of the words ‘direct message’ there is also a number. This tells you how many direct messages you have received. You send DM’s by clicking on ‘Direct Message.’

Unless you are using a client such as Co-Tweet or Hootsuite you will have to check the ‘@’ sign on your home page to see a stream of your messages. Ms. Gray, recommends Co-Tweet for a business who will have more than one person tweeting. Hootsuite works well for individuals.

OV = overheard, something you heard in real life. You would write:

OV @TheFirstCarol talking smack about having more followers than @Scupperlout #whatabraggert (Sure, tweet THAT, I won’t mind. I like attention).

# = hash tag, organizes an event #bwe9 (Blog World Expo 2009), or thought #beatcancer It puts your tweet into the stream with others using the same hash tag. Our class used the hash tag, #hosb (Hands on Small Business). There is a white bar on the right hand side of your Twitter screen where you can type in a word such as #hosb. When you do this you will see the stream, who is using it. You can also simply click on these specific words, or click on anything highlighted in your Twitter stream, and it will take you to the specific stream or web-site.

The hashtag can also emphasize a thought, #newfriends #wierd #quote, or make one up, #iamnotdense

Follow Friday - on Friday’s you will see tweets saying #FF or #FollowFriday This means they like this person and are encouraging others to follow that person. It is important that you ALWAYS say #FollowFriday @TheFirstCarol, like every Friday, okay? It’s a good thing, just do it.


Who to follow and why I might not follow you:

When someone follows me, I get an email and I go to Twitter and check them out. I click on ‘Follows’ (who they are following). Eventually, I will find @TheFirstCarol in their list of who they are following. If I am too deep into their list, i.e., more than three pages back, I don’t follow them. I assume they are only interested in having a big number, not a conversation. If they later RT me or @ me and demonstrate they are interested in a conversation I follow back.

I also check to see if the person has a web-site. If yes, I go to the web-site and if it says, INCREASE YOUR TWITTER FOLLOWING, or if it’s a blatant sales offering, I don’t follow. They are more about pushing something on me so they can make money. That’s not fun at a cocktail party and its not fun on Twitter. If their Twitter streams says, “get whiter teeth” I do not follow. If they have naughty pictures or invitations to see them naked, I do not follow back. If they have no RT’s or no @’s in their Twitter stream I do not follow. That is someone pushing information and not engaging with anyone else. Boring.

If everything in their stream is the EXACT same post:

@adamflater Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

@Hannah899 Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

@LouisPagan Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

@avadakedevra Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

This is a bot. It is on autopilot. It sends an auto post whenever you tweet their magic word. Again, who wants to talk to a machine? I’ll pass.


Get a Picture.

You need an Avatar. An avatar is the picture that represents you on the social media site. If the person who follows me does not have an avatar I do not follow them. If no picture, they may be a short-timer, not that interested, not that interesting. They need to care about their Twitter adventure enough to invest the time to put up a picture.


Write a bio.

This is one in the settings mode. Let it represent your personality. Be who you are. If you’re not funny, don’t force it. You can re-write it, edit it until it’s perfected and you feel a need to re-write it again. It is not set in stone. Experiment.


Say Thank You.

I thank my followers. I plan this on Hootsuite which allows me to write the tweet and send it at a later date. I can do this at my leisure when I have time to do a batch of days. I choose the day and time within 5 minutes.

I prefer thank-you’s to run first thing in the AM, between 6-7 AM, at 8 AM when people log on at work it doesn’t mess up the Twitter stream for the people who don’t care, but the person who it is intended for will see the message and know that I acknowledged them. Everyone loves to see that someone is talking to them, don’t be afraid to do it, it will make someone feel good.

If you cannot think of anything else to say, say thanks followers and write their Twitter names.

Always include the @ sign before the name (no space) or the tweep will not see it.

A typical thank you message looks like this:

Thanks followers: @GlennGThater @joomlawebmaster @iflashvideo @GilAsakawa @namenick Party Favors! Remember 2 feed petrock! http://ow.ly/v10w

The web-site link goes to a picture I’ve uploaded in TwitPic. Everyone who has a Twitter account automatically receives a Twitpic account. All you have to do is log-on using your twitter info and start uploading pictures. I copy the picture’s URL and paste into the window on Hootsuite to shorten the URL.

It makes this: http://twitpic.com/lal7r

Look like this: http://ow.ly/v10w

The ow.ly uses 11 characters, the other 18. Since you only have 140 characters available you want to keep your links short. By including a picture I make the tweet interesting to anyone else who may have tuned in and makes it fun for the person included in the tweet.


But what do I do...to get started?

Are you interested in advertising, web-design, jewelry, hiking, biking, writing, editing, publishing? Find a word that represents your interest or your business niche. Type the word in the white bar on the right hand column of your Twitter home page and see who/what comes up. Check these tweeps out. Pick a few that appear interesting. Follow them.

At the beginning of a Twitter adventure, no one thinks they have enough followers and some look for short cuts. Go for it if you want. There are plenty of people promoting ways to increase your following. That never interested me, I was more curious about how people found me, and then when they did, I checked out who they were following and followed some of their friends.

Ready to get started?

First, tell me who you want to find on Twitter... leave a note in the comments below. Come on, tell me the person that would get you so excited you’d tell everyone at work.

I'm serious, tell me. No one at work cares. Really.

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Things my mom didn't tell me

My mom told me there were three bedrooms at the place she had booked for us at the beach.

What she didn’t tell me: the two bedrooms on the second floor have private baths with jetted tubs, the living room features a gas fireplace, flat screen TV and stereo system, the kitchen a dishwasher, a side-by-side with filtered water, and granite countertops.

She also neglected to announce the deck featured an ocean view, touted a gas grill and a hottub, which is why I appeared without a bathing suit.

Had she told me it was equipped with a washer and dryer I would have brought my chores.

Stop.

I’m confused. I thought we were traveling with retired folk. I thought we were…not rich. I thought vacation timeshares were bad, and that you should not purchase them.

I still believe that is true.

Do not buy timeshares!

Do, however, encourage your parents to purchase them. ☺

Oh, and remember to bring along someone who can cook (that would not be me).

And enjoy the view.

With a glass of wine.

Out of a box.

Really.

That was my classy contribution...

What's your best contribution this summer?

Less cranky, more cranberry and I'll take that with honey

Good morning.

I did turn off the computer.

I set down my book.

I put on my sandals.

I went.

It was… different.

Yes, I stood inside the Cranberry Museum, which means I was not forced into the Kite Museum. So, before this vacation continues, allow me to get this out of the way:

• 8,000 acres of cranberries stretch across the West Coast


• Cranberries do NOT grow in water (they are, however, harvested in water)


• Cranberries require bees for pollination
  

What does all this mean?

Cranberry honey stands ready for my toast tomorrow.

How about you? What are you planning for tomorrow?

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She's got big ideas and it doesn't involve cooking or cleaning

What is Kerri Ann up to now?
The next morning Lee showed me a 3-D drawing in the paper of one of the downtown developments his company was working on. That gave me an idea. I spent weeks at the library researching and took my list to the newspaper and bought old editions, specific dates containing bird's eye illustrations of the city's core.



Saturdays I xeroxed, sizing everything perfectly. At home I cut and pieced it together, drew in the missing areas, and made my own map with colored squares of blue to represent Lee portfolio properties. Little pieces of paper drifted and fluttered from my project. “Your mother is rubbing off on me,” I ribbed.
(A Single Pearl, Chapter 9).



The idea germinating blossomed on that decision walk. When I got home I called Lee to let him know I’d resurfaced. “I’m taking that cooking class,” I said. I went through my leftover pile of newspapers, cut out recipes, and that week cooked them as if they came from a class.

Well, I wanted to do it myself, but after telling Breena I’d set a kitchen towel on fire she swooped in for rescue; she slaved while I cleaned up the smoke damage. We froze the meals and I brought them out to thaw as needed. The dishes were actually pretty good. Lee was impressed, what a good student I was, what a great class. Then off I’d go to study—for my real estate license. (A Single Pearl, Chapter 9).

“If I said it once, I said it 16 times!”

I carry around a mini-notebook where I capture class feedback and include advice from published authors. On one page is an Arizona newspaper clipping. Diana Gabaldon is quoted sharing her three rules: read everything, write, don’t stop. At the moment, I’m reading a New York Times Bestselling Author (not Gabaldon) with 16 published works and wondering if Gabaldon needs to add a fourth point, repeat yourself, a lot. In my author-of-the-moment focus I’ve identified this collection of similarities in the first two books I've read:

• Female protagonist pep-talks self out loud, saying things like ‘get yourself together


• Female characters have sickly stomachs and tend to throw up a lot


• Comes from a wealthy, influential family, with a domineering father


• Lives in a small town near a large city, and drives a jeep


• Siblings are more attractive


• One sibling is developmentally delayed, or socially-underdeveloped


• A character works for a newspaper


• A man sires a child with someone other than his wife, child is hidden


• Female characters ride horses bareback -- ever tried it? Give me a saddle, geez


• Characters hook their thumbs at their chests and hitch their chins


• Young male characters talk basely about women, driven by baser instincts, i.e., they think about sex a lot and its not pretty, nor is it love


• Female protagonist makes bad choices in men, then suddenly makes a good one?! [Has anyone connected with something has to happen to change her/him, maybe soul searching with a friend, counseling?]


• And those good men they finally pick were: social outcast, pined over girl for years, and as youths had a trouble with the law


• Someone has a girl who is their sex slave, willing to do anything to keep her man, which doesn’t seem to work out so well for her, and ultimately is not appreciated by him


• Someone practices a sexual deviancy: brother to sister, husband caught with 15-yr-old…


• Someone has gold eyes (I guess that’s better than the oft repeated green-eyed, red-haired girl), but gold eyes? While extremely intriguing in the first book, feels like cheating in the second


• Both books take place in Oregon -- okay, that’s not fair, I just threw it in to make my list longer. Writers write about the area they know, or like me, they add one they don’t know and say, “This will give me an excuse to travel to…”


• Someone dies -- okay, now I’m just completely off the deep end, they’re romance mysteries, for heavens sake


• Alright already, the author has given the female protagonists different personalities, but still…

In the first book I read, I wanted to do the class thing on the author, mail her a minus sign, draw her attention to a particular portion of the book and explain she had not properly laid the groundwork for a twist one of her characters seized. Then I realized, I could only comprehend that misstep because I’d made the same mistake myself, and our class had caught me and hauled me up on ‘reader abuse charges.’ I’d felt the stab of their feedback, but in order to obtained desired future readers more than preserving a fragile self-image, I did a revision, found very, very simple ways to interweave missing links, and lay hints. Occasionally, I’ll remark to the group, oh that’s something you’ll catch when you read it a second time. How arrogant am I? Well, egotistical enough to keep writing.

And if it’s as easy as repetition, then my books will always have these five key points:

• A woman who hates cooking


• A man who doesn’t understand she hates cooking


• A struggle as she competes in his world


• His surprise at how successful , (smart, talented, creative--fill in the blank) she is


• His discovery: only by giving her what she wants will he obtain the life he wants

I am beginning to conceive that getting published is because you’re really, really good, (and how many of us attain that category first book out), or you’re really, really lucky, and how many…well, to sum it up, luck or talent wins. I’d like to find a third item to round out my list, maybe persistence. Would make me feel more professional with a minimum three bullet point list, and slightly closer to Galbaldon.