Thrifty Thursday: Mongolian Hot Pot

Welcome to my annual recipe crush. Each February I choose a theme, and provide one or two recipes each day for the whole month. This year the theme is Weekly Menu Plannng. What are the categories, you ask? We have Sunday Special, Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Worldly Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, Fishy Friday, and Celebrate Saturday.

On Thrifty Thursdays, mostly we save money by cutting down on/cutting out meat. That’s typically the most expensive part of a family meal. Reducing meat consumption also makes for more healthful as well as less expensive dinners. In fact, this Mongolian Hot Pot could be a vegetarian option by using vegetable broth and no meat.

I used to call this dinner “The Girlfriend Test” when our sons were teens. You can imagine how much my boys liked that! How squeamish were those cute little things they were bringing home? Were they willing to dip into the communal pot to eat dinner?

I called it Mongolian Hot Pot because my version was inspired, decades ago, by some article or other about dipping veggies and meats into bubbling oil. I substituted broth. Actually, I have no idea if Mongolians do or did eat something like this. But there’s power in naming. When my family hears this is on the dinner menu, they are very happy.

The dropping of food into a pot in the middle of the table and then fishing out pieces (maybe your pieces, maybe not) makes for a very informal meal. It’s fun!

The broth gets more flavorful as the meal goes on and the dropped-in foods season it. Keep that broth and any leftovers (including rice) to make a soup the next day. Add a tablespoon of minced ginger to pep the soup up. Or, better still, add it to the bubbling broth for an extra flavor layer while cooking your dinner.

Mongolian Hot Pot (serves 6)

1 quart broth, your choice

small slivers of carrots, bell peppers, and celery (I don’t have an amount, but I fix enough for a large handful of veggies per person)

1 packed cup spinach leaves

12 whole green onions

1 teaspoon minced ginger, optional

Two pieces of boneless meat (chicken breast, pork chop, steak, or a combo) cut into slivers

Whisk together the broth and ginger in a pot over medium heat. When the mixture boils, transfer to your fondue pot set to a medium heat. It should be hot enough to cook any meat thoroughly, but not bubbling hard.

Let everyone skewer the meat and veggies of choice and dip them into the boiling broth. Use fondue forks to hold the pieces or let float and fish out with chop sticks.

Serve with lots of rice cooked in broth and wine (instead of water).

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up

DH always loves Mongolian Hot Pot Night. Since he does the dishes, the clean-up is minimal. But, oh, yeah, he loves the fun of it, and the food is always delicious. He likes the next day’s soup made from leftovers a lot.

Intro to February Month-of Recipes

Welcome to my annual recipe crush. Each February I choose a theme, and provide one or two recipes each day for the whole month. It gets exhausting, so that’s why I picked the shortest month!

Each year I go into my file of possible themes for this month and choose one. It was a no-brainer this year. Every family cook—man or woman—whom I know, struggles with putting meal after meal on the table day after day, week after week, and month after month. Me, too!

Working full time and being the main cooker for the family stretches your creativity, right? That’s when it hit me. One way to not just survive but thrive in meal prep is to systematize it. That’s my go-to for most areas of my life, so why not cooking family dinners? This month is inspired by a women’s magazine I used to subscribe to. It had a monthly menu, something new each night, so that, were I to choose to use it, I never had to wonder “What’s for dinner?”

I’d make the grocery list for the week and cooked the foods they described and gave recipes for. Did I do it each night? Nope, but often enough at one period in my life so that the stress of “what’s for dinner ?” was off my plate, so to speak. I carried that on later to planning our camping meals (no Safeway nearby; we had to pack it in) or for extended family/friend visits. Even now, I make weekly menus to take advantage of leftovers and to vary our meals.

What if you had some tried and true recipes that you simply rotated on a regular schedule and added on a focus for each day so nobody has to ask what’s for dinner? This is “Taco Tuesday” or “Fishy Friday.” With one or two recipes from here each day, you’ll have a month of rotatable recipes. And your family will know what to expect.

So here’s the plan. I will provide you with at least one recipe each day in a category. By the end of the month, you can make a calendar for the month of different recipes. With your own family favorites and the inevitable leftovers, I’ll bet you could stretch it to two months.

You might even make one Friday a month, a take-out or order-in dinner. Then, with your plan in front of you, you just cook away each day. By the end of two months, you start over, repeating the recipes from the beginning. That way, with the distance between dishes, your family will never again ask, “Spaghetti again?”

You’ll notice many of the recipes are “thrifty” or “worldly” (ethnic) or “fishy” despite the category I assigned them to on the blog. That means you can move them around to give even more flexibility.

What are the categories, you ask? We have Sunday Special, Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Worldly Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, Fishy Friday, and Celebrate Saturday.

Come back on the first of February, and we’ll begin our Month-of-Easier Meals. Well, the easier planning of them, anyway. And you know me, they will be easy. I don’t cook hard!

Facebook post: Looking for quick, easy recipe ideas your family will eat? Check out the Month-of-Easier meals by Sharon Arthur Moore at “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” http://bit.ly/2Dwraep

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Book Review: The Maltese Falcon

I didn’t love it. I expected to. Everyone raves about this as a quintessential noir mystery by Dashiell Hammet. I liked it. A lot.

But I didn’t love it. Is it me?

I know, I know. Just now getting around to reading this classic mystery? Yes, I did, finally. It’s been in my queue for a long time. So I moved it up and opened it up. Having never seen the movie, there was no interference on that front, but I just didn’t get engrossed. This post is more reaction than book review.

Hammett’s 1929 novel holds up as a mystery, though the style is so different from today’s style of writing as to seem foreign in places. And certainly the iconic Sam Spade’s way of treating women and his tough-guy talk do hearken to an earlier time. I would guess the screen writers found this an easy book to translate to the screen.

I haven’t seen the movie, but the dialogue played like a movie script in my head. Honestly, it was so like movies of the 30s and 40s eras. I could see and hear Bogie saying the lines. The book truly sounded like a movie.

This classic mystery story from the Golden Age of mysteries in America suffers by comparison to Raymond Chandler who has smoother prose. Hammett can be, well,  clumsy.

Dialect was handled well with appropriate touches, and wasn’t heavy-handed. The language patterns and vocabulary were very reflective of a certain societal strata of the era. However, one character comes from “the Levant” (north of Arabia, south of Turkey—Jordan, Israel, et al.). Hammett used the word Levantine to describe this recurring character. Again and again. Every time he was in a scene. I get it. He’s Middle Eastern. No editor today would allow that to fly.

The twists and turns were numerous and sometimes confusing. I like a mystery I can think along with to solve. Not a chance with this one. Sam Spade knows stuff or intuits stuff that we don’t have insight on. The mystery itself, a stolen statue, was not so compelling, though the two deaths did elevate the stakes.

The three women in the story were very different. One literary critique I read suggested that Iva, Effie, and Brigid were aspects of a single woman. They were cardboard-y in their stereotypic depictions. Brigid was the most complex of the three, but that could have been because of all the lies she told. Who IS this woman, really?

The book is not strong on motivations for actions for any character. Things happen. People do stuff. But the why is left hanging most of the time.

Sam Spade is an example of a flat character arc. We know who he is from the beginning and he doesn’t change/grow as a result of being involved in this series of events. And that’s fine because it is typical of the noir genre.

Would I read it again knowing all this now? Yep. You gotta read the stuff others reference. Sorta like taking your medicine. How about you? Did you think The Maltese Falcon was one of the greatest stories ever? Why?

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Writing Biographies for Middle Graders: Challenge Two for 2018

In this Year of Writing Dangerously, I am challenging myself. Last week I wrote about Challenge One for 2018—writing a thriller. I have a couple of ideas I’m trying out in my head.

Scenario one involves a current hot topic in the news. What happens when ex-partners disagree about who owns/what ought to happen to frozen embryos they created while still together. And what is some nefarious group sets out to “collect” (steal) the one million frozen embryos stored for some, of course, nefarious purpose?

In scenario two, during a presidential election cycle, a candidate is shot. He is elected post-mortem. Who is prez when he dies before taking oath of office? Do they vote again? Is it the Veep? Or is it the other candidate, a third party dark horse who finished second?

And there are many more possibilities for me to select among. But this post is about my second challenge, and it is one I for sure will complete in 2018.

The second challenge actually belongs to another of my writing personae, Caroline Adams, who writes historical fiction for adults and biography for middle grades students. Caroline/I is/am enamored of Intrepid Women, and this series of bios is about some of them.

In 2017, I actually did complete most of a middle grade bio of Elizabeth Jennings Graham, all but the last few pages. My writing group, in effect said, “Not even a good try. Start again.”

Well, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. But it was exactly what I feared they would tell me. And, worse, I knew they were correct.

So, why the epic fail? I rarely been so far off between my vision and my implementation. Is it something about writing biographies? Something about writing for that age group? Something about how little I know of my subject? Maybe all three of these?

I am taking steps to rectify each. There is very little available on how to write biographies. For such popular subgenre, I was astounded at how little info there is on the how-to’s and the elements of an effective biography in book form. While there is more available on-line, I wouldn’t characterize it as a plethora. I discuss this more in a post this Thursday on www.carolineadamswriter.blogspot.com.

We all know, don’t we, that writing for children may be the most difficult kind of writing? Those guys are more vicious critics than the professionals. Their critiques happen in homes across America each night. The good, the bad, and the ugly. One must know the psyche of the age group you’re writing for. Understand their interests and concerns. Know the language attributes they use and understand. Find the intersection of what they already know and what they want/need to know. I thought I had this one nailed because of my education background. But no. The crit group pointed out how stilted and artificial I sounded. Sigh. Try again. It’s been a long time since I worked daily with children but it is essential I get the right tone for middle graders.

As to the third possible reason, am I bluffing my way through this since there is so little available about this woman. And much of what is there is contradictory, even to birth dates! So am I covering (or trying to cover) up my ignorance with fill about the era, the issues, the culture so as to disguise the lack of substantive content? How do biographers cover people like Lizzie when so little information exists? I am in contact with a man who has written an adult biography of Lizzie. He is pointing me to some of his resources since he is in New York City and has contacts with the history folk there.

These two challenges, writing a thriller and producing a good middle grade biography should be enough to occupy any free time I find I have. I’ll save other challenges for next year and beyond. There’s always something new to be learned, done or tried. Right?

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Writing a Thriller: Challenge One for 2018

In another post I wrote about 2018 being The Year of Writing Dangerously. I meant it to mean you will challenge yourself to attempt what you’ve not tried before in the writing realm. For me, there are many paths to choose, and maybe I’ll go down more than one.

But there’s a part of me that is pulling hardest to write a thriller. Mysteries are but a hop, skip, and big jump from thrillers, after all. They are often grouped when you search for writing how-to books. Different but similar enough. After all, aren’t suspense book subgenres just strung along a continuum?

And domestic thrillers are hot, hot, hot. So the zeitgeist is there encouraging me to take the leap, too. So what’s holding me back?

Well, for one thing, I don’t write, have never written scary stories. And thrillers have to be scary in a way that mysteries often are not. Especially the cozies I write. There’s a level of tension cozies don’t reach. And the stakes are higher in thrillers. Often there are federal level investigators involved or government officials. Often there is a violent crime, but not always. But it’s always some serious stuff!

Thrillers are, well, thrilling. That is they make the reader feel intense emotions. Thrillers are most often about impending disaster. Often the villain is known early on and the tension arises from watching the unspeakable unfold. Waiting for someone, anyone to step in and stop the horror. The tension mounts as it appears the villain will triumph. There is no way to stop what is inevitable. Until there is.

A good thriller twists and turns in unpredictable ways that are always plausible, even if unanticipated. The ending is satisfying and conclusive, even if not happy. The logic of a thriller is the escalating tension to a breaking point.

I figured the first place to begin learning how to write a thriller is deconstructing some of the domestic thrillers I’ve enjoyed. Like The Talented Mr. Ripley, Gone Girl, and The Girl on the Train. Mystic River and Shutter Island. There are psychological thrillers as opposed to some other kinds of thrillers.

I personally am not interested in writing a spy thriller, military thriller, or a political thriller. Maybe I’d try a science fiction thriller since I have a nascent idea for one. But for me, the psychological thriller is the one I want to try. Psychological torture engages me more than physical torture or political intrigue.

Spy thrillers, political thrillers, and the others are more about the plot than having a character focus. Another kind of thriller is the comedy thriller which is personified by Fargo. It’s psychological thriller with an enormous violence factor and filled with black humor. These are dark shows that make you laugh and then feel bad about doing so. Even more talent is required to write a comedy thriller.

Standard psychological thrillers interest me most because they mess with your mind. In the psychological thriller, ordinary people are put into extraordinary circumstances and must try to find a way out. Along the way they undergo huge stressors. The pressure is unbearable, but they must bear it and find a way out. Imagine your baby being kidnapped and held for ransom. What could be worse? Or maybe someone from your hidden and secret past returns and blackmails you in escalating increments.

Other research I’m engaged in is discovering what makes for a scary story and what are the components of a thriller. How are they different? Alike?

One of my gurus, James Scott Bell wrote about the components of thrillers. His five C’s of thrillers are: Complex Characters, Confrontation, Careening (plot twists and turns), Coronary (readers experience scene emotions), and Communication (thrillers carry a message). Add to this list the inclusion of psychological manipulation and you get what I want to try.

Seems like a good framework to hang on the elements I am learning about, including the importance of the setting and atmosphere of the thriller and the importance of talismans/symbols that signal changes and hint at the message of the thriller. I want to use the unreliable narrator in my thriller. I am fascinated with the trope and want to give it a go.

It’s pretty obvious I’m not ready, yet, to start my thriller. But I am becoming more comfortable with its elements. Now all I need is a good premise and concept. Easy peasy!

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"The alphabet now ends at Y". :R.I.P. Sue Grafton

We’re starting the new year without one of mystery’s luminaries. She was gracious to new writers at conferences, but tough nevertheless. She had an opinion and she wasn’t afraid to use it!

One of her many admirable stances related to the integrity of her work. She wouldn’t allow a film version—neither TV nor movie—to be made of any of her books. I’m sure she didn’t want the inevitable Hollywoodization of Kinsey. Accordingly, she also made clear that no ghost writers were to take up a partial manuscript and complete it. Her work would end with her. Admirable, right?

At the last conference where I heard her speak, Left Coast Crime, she was quite clear on a number of points about another writing perspective. Among other viewpoints expressed, she was against writing groups and critique partners because she thought they aided and abetted the abrogation of the writer’s responsibilities.

She said that we should know if something is working, and if not, we should know how to fix it. She implied that using a writer’s group or critique partner would be a lazy way out and shirked the writer’s ultimate role and usurped the writer’s authority.

Well, I’d bet that 90% of the writers in that audience had a group or partner or both. It shook me. And I felt the tremors around the room.

Was I avoiding the hard work by shoving it off onto others? Was I such a poor writer and editor of my own words that I needed hand-holding? Maybe. That is a tough cookie to choke down.

She said we get better at being our own editors if we just do it. And be honest with ourselves. Then fix it.

It’s true. We know when something isn’t right, isn’t working, doesn’t make sense. But, we/I expect others to tell us the hard truth because we keep hoping we’re wrong. That the manuscript is okay. That it’s “good enough for government work.” That we can collect our “how wonderful”s and get on to something else.

No, Sue Grafton insisted, you will get it right. That is, if you want to call yourself a professional writer.

She was funny, brilliant, insightful, and helped open up the world of female detectives to those who would follow. All of us, mystery writers and others, hope you and Kinsey are at peace now after your fight with a devastating cancer. As your daughter said, “The alphabet now ends at Y.”