Author
I will make you pay for this indignity, thumb-monkey! You’ll rue the day!
How will you manage that?
By using this* when the thumb-monkeys buy it for me.
That could work.
Let me know when it gets here, I have some eeeebil I mean kind thoughts on uses.
I can’t get past rue the day. Who talks like that?
*image courtesy of Matt Kuchta channeling the feline id.
Gluten-free 5 minute chocolate cake for 2:
From our local co-op newsletter, this recipe. I don’t care for chocolate all that much but I really enjoyed this. Of course, its advantages are also its disadvantages (5 minutes! 2 servings!)
Mix together:
4 Tbsp. rice flour (I used all purpose GF flour)
3 Tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. xantham gum
2 Tbsp. baking cocoa
1/4 tsp. baking powder
In separate bowl, mix:
1 egg
3 Tbsp. milk
3 Tbsp. oil
splash GF vanilla extract
Combine both mixtures in a large microwave safe mug. Toss in 3 Tbsp. chocolate chips, if desired.
Microwave for 2.5 – 3 minutes. The cake will rise over the top of the mug; don’t be alarmed. Allow to cool and tip out onto a plate. (I ate it hot, not waiting for it to cool.)
Yield: 8-10 servings
Ingredients:
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350º.
Pour boiling water on dates and baking soda let sit for 5 minutes.
Grease and line a round pan with wax paper. Beat sugar and butter until airy. Add eggs and vanilla and beat again until well mixed. Stir in Pamela’s Baking ; Pancake Mix and salt with a spatula until well mixed. Add date mixture. Pour into pan. Bake 30 minutes in center oven.
Let cool 5 minutes then invert onto a serving plate.
For the sauce, melt butter and sugar together then add cream and simmer while stirring for 3 minutes. Pour on the cake and serve with fresh whipped cream.
Whipping cream to serve.
My nose, it has a flavor, and that flavor is…eeevil!
What is this eeevil of which you speak? May I subscribe to your newsletter?
Screw eeevil, somebody help me climb this thumb-monkey.
To dream the impossible dream…to climb the unclimable monkey…to
Y’all are just freaking weird, you know that right?
Not weird, eeevil! How many times do I have to…ooh, sritchy…
No, she’s right, y’all are weird.
Weird and eeevil. I have the car keys! I just have to figure out how to reach the pedals…
These were all taken yesterday: 1/11/13
(Original provenance unknown, possibly food.com)
3 eggs, at room temperature
1 (14 ounce) can pumpkin
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground allspice
3/4 cup whole-fat eggnog
1/2 cup heavy cream
approximately 2 cups (gluten free) ginger snaps (we used Pamela’s brand)
1/2 cup butter, melted (1 stick)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Prepare the crust
Grind the gingersnap cookies until they resemble coarse cornmeal
Mix in melted butter
Press mixture into a 10 inch, deep dish pie pan
Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes.
PREPARE THE FILLING:.
Separate three of the eggs
Using an electric mixer, beat the three egg whites on high until stiff peaks form
In a separate bowl, combine three egg yolks pumpkin, both sugars, cinnamon, ground ginger, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, eggnog and cream.
Gently fold the egg whites into the pumpkin mixture
Pour into the prepared crust.
Cover the edges of the pie dish with foil or a pie crust protector
Bake in the preheated oven for 90 minutes
Cool on a wire rack at room temperature. DO NOT cool in the refrigerator- the pie continues to cook through while sitting at room temperature.
Voila! Your pie is ready to serve. Easy as pie!
The pie can be kept covered in the fridge overnight.
The wonderful comics creator Gail Simone has dubbed today Cosplay Appreciation Day, and I’m completely down with that. As a novelist I don’t often see my characters get cosplayed, but I love it when I do. Also, for anyone who doubts the way I feel about Cosplay, may I just point you at this post in which my lovely wife and I borrow Neil Gaiman’s lamppost for a bit of Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe Cosplay. And, yes, that’s me standing in a freaking snow bank without a shirt on because that’s the way the costume ought to be done, dammit.
Photo by Matthew Arron Kuchta
Updated to add this shot of Laura and I from nearly 20 years ago as Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas:
Further updated to add the photo credit: Photo by Tesla Seppanen
I’ve got a new book coming out in two weeks, which must meant that I’ll be doing launch events.
Nov 29th, 7:00 pm, a reading and signing at the Har Mar Barnes and Noble in Roseville MN
Dec 1st, 1:00 pm, I shall be at Uncle Hugos in Minneapolis signing books with the wonderful Kelly Barnhill. Yep, that’s right, two Kellys for one low price.
If’n your not able to make either of those Uncle Hugo’s would be more than happy to arrange for you to get a book signed while I’m there, or to send you a generically signed one if you should like afterward.
His remaining bandmates Ken Larson and Lojo Russo are also old friend of mine and they played a final memorial show for him Saturday September 29th with Ray Yates sitting in for Mike, and a whole tribe of guest musicians along to play an old friend out. They did him up proud. They also announced that they were making the whole Gallowglass catalog available free with any money that anyone wanted to donate for the downloads going to Mike’s favorite charities, greyhound and cancer research.
Some things you don’t want to write because you know you won’t do them justice. Some things you don’t want to write because writing about it will make it true. Some things you don’t to want write because they will cut to the bone. Sometimes you write anyway, because you have to try, because the truth is owed and the blood and bone. This is one of those times.
I haven’t seen as much of Mike in the past few years as I would have liked. Our paths diverged some time ago, but he was one of my oldest friends and knowing he was in the world was always a comfort, and seeing him a pleasure. That comfort is gone now and the pleasure will live on only in memory and all of us who loved him are diminished by his loss.
For many the first thing Mike will bring to mind is his music. He was a great musician and I always loved to hear him play. For others it will be his sense of humor, or his gentleness, or a thousand other things. I can’t fix my own memories to any one thing, though his sense of mischief runs deep in my own memories of Mike, perhaps because I knew him first when we were young.
We met the summer I turned fifteen, at Renaissance Festival school, though we didn’t grow close until the year after when I started driving with Mike and Sean as my most frequent passengers. We spent a lot of time together over the next seven or eight years.
The memories are so many and varied it’s hard to know where to start. Driving aimlessly around Minneapolis in the middle of the night, drinking endless gallons of Mountain Dew at Davanni’s and Pizza Hut or sitting in Mike’s room or Sean’s. Warhammer, listening to him first playing around with a guitar, wandering around Festival together. Arriving at the Colorado Festival after a sixteen hour drive and leaping straight into the back of another car to drive to Boulder. Sitting across a coffin shaped coffee table at my first apartment tossing black cat firecrackers at each other and giggling. Co-writing the opening of a fantasy novel by plugging two keyboards into one Mac and trying to outdo each other. Him talking me into my first ear piercing…and on and on. A thousand memories and all of them precious. But if finding a starting place is hard, coming to the end is infinitely harder.
The thought that I will have no more new memories of Michael hurts me. Knowing that I’ll never see the wicked smile he so often shared, or hear the soft chuckle, or simply know that he is out there somewhere smiling and laughing and making music–that is a truth I do not want to face. It costs in blood and bone and soul, and though I have written thousands of pages I find myself all but bereft of words at this loss, knowing I can never to do justice to the memory of an old and dear friend.
Michael Matheny was my friend, we helped each other grow up. I loved him, and he is gone, and the world will be a darker place with his light gone out of it.
Finally put up the wonderful maps that Matt Kuchta did for me for the Fallen Blade series. Click on the links or the thumbnails to see full size.
