Friends,
Peter’s mother is extremely ill with heart and kidney failure and will not survive more than a short time. With this in mind, my online activitities are going to be severely curtailed until at least the end of July. Please bear with me while we attempt to deal with our loss.
Thanks.
Some of you will know approximately where we live in Ireland, so I am sorry to tell you that this story is locally germane:
Post mortems due on County Wicklow bodies
They were our neighbors. Not the kind you’re close to, perhaps (though they were close to many others), but they were the kind you’d always wave “good morning” to as you walked or biked past their property.
And now, suddenly, gone: they and their son. This is too odd, for our part of the world.
Meanwhile, I am already tired of the local media presence. You really don’t want the satellite vans double-parked down the road from you, and the people banging on your door trying to manufacture a story out of nothing.
(sigh) And I think about the family’s defensive but not deadly sheepdog, which used to run out at me when I was walking and threaten me to Stay Away From the Gate. Who feeds him, now?…
Thanks for your concern, everybody. I’m a little better. Won’t be able to get the ultrasound till next week, though. (mutter) I will be sorting out those last book requests today and tomorrow, though, so if you haven’t heard from me, you will shortly.
Meanwhile, though, there’s this to laugh about.
Authors’ copies of my books have started piling up around here again, so I thought I’d offer some of them here for those of you who might like signed copies of this or that before we start restructuring / restocking our offsite storage. Also, I’ve been able to acquire some good-quality copies of earlier stuff (the early Young Wizards hardcovers in particular), and as a result I now have some copies available to be let go.
If you’re interested, please see the full list here.
Thanks!
[tags]Diane, Duane, books, novels, used, new, Young Wizards, Star Trek, Spider-Man[/tags]
I mentioned this place in passing in a post some while back, and it really needs to have something more said about it, as there’s not nearly enough information online.
There are a lot of nice estaminets and bars in Brussels, but this one’s a favorite one for both Peter and me. Other such places will have more beers, or more food, or both; but none will so perfectly give you that “timeslip” feeling of having stumbled into another century. And there’s a cat. (And she’s a nice one.)
Le Cirio is the last remainder of a whole chain of restaurants founded by Francesco Cirio, a food entrepreneur who started the industrial farming and production of tomatoes for canning purposes in the mid-1800’s: the direct descendant of his company, now a multinational, still cans and ships GM-free tomatoes worldwide.
This branch of the cafe/restaurant was built in 1886, possibly one of the last in a series of eighteen establishments meant to serve as “tasting gateways” for Cirio’s products (there was always an industrial warehouse for the products nearby, and such alliances of Cirio-shop-and-warehouse existed as far away as New York, Berlin, Paris and London). All the others are gone now, but this one has resisted anything but the most minuscule changes since it was built. It is famous as the home of the half en half, which (for North American readers) has nothing whatsoever to do with dairy: it’s white wine and sparkling wine mixed one-to-one, a combination that may sound weird at first, but actually works very well.
The cafe itself is a splendid den of perfectly preserved Art Nouveau: stained glass, ornamental brass, carved wood and marble-topped, iron-legged tables, with toilet facilities that are also gorgeously antique. Some of the wall hangings or tapestries are a little faded, the old mirrors a touch spotty: no one cares. The pace is leisurely. The music is — if not exactly 1890’s — also of an earlier time, more likely to be Piaf if anything else. People sit, have a coffee, drink, read their newspapers, chat, have a sandwich, gaze out the windows at the old Bourse building outside.
The first time I stopped in here, it was because Minou was doing that very thing. I mean, of course, “le Chat Minou,” the official Le Cirio cat, who lives in the apartment upstairs. Minou (it’s a French word for “kitty”) was tucked up in meatloaf mode on top of the espresso machine — plainly a smart move on a cold wet day — looking out at the pouring rain, eyes half closed. I was out and about looking for a cafe to write in, and I saw Minou and thought, “Why am I not in there?”
I went in and spent some happy, relaxed hours writing. I’ve been fairly often since. It’s not a big food place: mostly they have little sandwiches and such. (I like the croque monsieur.) Waiters in the traditional long white aprons patrol the room in a calm and alert way. Little old ladies drink the classic Belgian beers like Duvel. No one pays attention to one more writer working on a movie or whatever: they get that kind of thing all the time. The place fills, empties, fills again, all in an overarching sense of calm.
At quiet times, Minou appears to check the spaces underneath the tables and see if anyone’s dropped anything nice. She is not one of those in-your-face, demonstrative cats: she is willing to be friendly if you feel like paying attention to her, but otherwise entirely willing to let you be. On a cold day, she’ll jump up behind the espresso machine again to take advantage of the uninterrupted view out the window. It’s all very sedate, just a short walk away from the noise and expense and tourist-trampling of the Grand Place.
So recommended. Stop in and have yourself a beer.
Le Cirio | 20 Rue de la Bourse | Brussels / Bruxelles | Open: daily, 10am-midnight.
No credit cards
(link to Google map at Wallonie Tourism website)
A side issue: just outside the front of the restaurant/bar, a little off to the right as you look out,are the glassed-in foundations of a medieval church and convent, unearthed by archeologists in the 1980s.
(Also: Probably I shouldn’t be surprised that the only comprehensive article on the Web about Le Cirio is in Italian, at their version of the Slow Food site.)
This has been in the pipeline for a while.YoungWizards.com is now running under the Drupal content-management system, which will make it capable of handling its own blogs, forums, and other goodies. YW.net will follow suit shortly.
Feel free to stop by and kick the tires!
[tags]Young, wizards, Nita and Kit, Diane Duane, wizardry, So You Want to Be a Wizard[/tags]
A team of University of Florida Engineering researchers have come to the conclusion that microwaving plastic scrubbers and kitchen sponges on full power can destroy practically 100% of the bacteria and viruses, parasites or spores collected on them. …[Gabriel] Bitton, leader of the study, … remarked that if people really wanted to sanitize their sponges and scrubbers they should use the microwave rather than the dishwasher which only cleans them.
…Sponges and scrub pads were ‘cooked’ in an ordinary domestic microwave oven for varying lengths of time. They were wrung out and the microbial load of the water was determined for each test. The findings were compared with water from control sponges and pads not placed in the microwave.The results were telling. Every contaminant but the spores were killed after two minutes. The spores took a little longer, between four to ten minutes to be exterminated as they are difficult to kill, being resistant to radiation, heat and lethal chemical substances.
…I might want to test my sponges first to make sure they won’t melt. But this sounds like it’s worth a try!
[tags]bacteria, spores, kill, clean, sterilize, microwave, sponge, scrub, kill the bugs[/tags]
It’s good to take a challenge every now and then. From over at Daily15, for today’s challenge word, which is “solstice”:
Invictus
In the dimness he woke and knew it was too late. Morning never came so late unless the world was ending.
Fortunately, he knew what to do about that.
He blinked and ruffled his feathers, looking around. This was his place. Surrounding a patch of grass were two holly trees, a pine, a cypress whose branches all went the wrong way, and much shrubbery, mostly beech and thorn. The shelter was good here, even on nights like last night. And in the holly, food appeared hung up: good food that tasted of fat and meat. It was all his. Later, when it was time for sex, there would be someone else who’d get some of it. But right now, he owned it.
This cold white stuff on the ground did complicate matters. It came and went without warning, and here it was again. Now, others who might have spent the morning scratching around the ground instead of stuffing themselves full up here would be turning up in his territory, eating his food. His feathers ruffled up again, this time with rage at the thought. Bastards. Bastards. Kill them all.
He hopped up onto the branch that had the best view across the patch of grass and into the bushes, and sang. Bastards! Who wants a piece of me? Come and get it! Because this was when it had to be said, no matter how much you might have preferred to sit quiet with your feathers fluffed up, conserving your heat. The dim sky was already paling toward that too-cold blue. It would be a bad day, cold, everybody and his family would turn up here trying to get at the tree food, which was what you needed this time of year if you meant to stay alive until dusk –
And suddenly he heard the harsh dark cawing coming from across the hardened path, across the wall, in the wood full of tall starved pines. He shivered. Not so early, he thought, what are you doing up at this hour? But he knew. That one wanted the tree-food too. It had come for it before. Now, in the silence before the morning wind, he heard the flapping of the wings.
Hastily he turned to the food cage, ate a few mouthfuls, felt the fat melt down his throat like blood, like life. Almost before he finished, the darkness had landed with a noisy thrash of leaves and branches up in the holly. A huge expressionless black eye gazed down at him.
He sang. It was almost all he could do. It’s mine! Stay away, or I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! But the outcome was hardly so simple. The black-headed, white-backed shape with the axe-like beak bounced down another branch, and another, its eye on that tree food, that meat. It liked meat too. He’d once seen it zoom down onto the pond and simply pick up a baby duck and fly off with it. I’ll kill you if you get any closer! Don’t push me! I will!
It came closer. It was winter, it was death, the shape now only one branch of holly away. He sang as if life depended on it: because it did. If he had enough to eat, the sun came up. If the sun came up, the world was safe. It was as simple as that. Go away! I have to eat the food or the world will end! I’ll kill you to keep that from happening! Monster, go away, don’t make me rip you up — ! He fluttered at the monstrous gaping head, enraged, desperate.
A clacketing, rattling noise from behind. The black eye went wide, the death-pale bulk roused its wings and flapped clumsily out of the holly tree. Desperate with relief, he flung himself at the food-cage again, and ate with frantic speed as the sky paled brighter, toward day-blue: and between mouthfuls, he sang at the top of his lungs, shuddering with relief and triumph. Bastard! I warned you not to mess with me! Victory! Victory!
The sun peered up over the far hill. The shadows fled. He gorged himself as the black bird flew off, and stopped, and shouted again, Victory!
…She stood there with her teacup in one hand, looking out across the back yard snow at the dot of red breast deep in among the holly branches, pecking furiously at the suet in its little cage. “Boy,” she said to the husband, back in the kitchen, “listen to that little guy. You’d think he’d just won World War Three.”
“Yeah. Where’s the milk?”
The door closed. On the snow, the sun of the shortest day shone.
Victory!
[tags]ficlet, short, fiction, Diane Duane, 15, minutes[/tags]
Those of you who may have been watching the progressive site revamp at The-Big-Meow.com should be warned that, while I was attempting to add some features this morning, some stuff got screwed up. It’s not serious, but it affects the look-and-feel of the site, and may take a while to fix, as I’m still not entirely sure what caused the problem.
I was attempting to do two things, one fairly dull and one kind of neat. (a) was the addition of a custom “favicon” that would show up in people’s browser tabs when the pages loaded. (b) was access, via a separate internal blog, to the research materials I’ve been using while writing the book. (I keep these materials under control using Onfolio — once a stand-alone resource, now part of Internet Explorer since Onfolio was bought by Microsoft. Onfolio enables you to save entire web pages, even web sites, for offline viewing, and to publish the pages either as printed reports or as part of a weblog for personal use.) It occurred to me that it might be fun for interested people to see the “raw material” that I’m using.
Since I was working on both of these additions to the TBM site at once, one or another of them has caused the site’s formatting to be screwed up for logged-in site members — sidebar images aren’t displaying, and text formatting has gone erratic: some is centered when it shouldn’t be; some that shouldn’t be centered, is. I’ve removed all the new material and done everything I can think of to return the site to the way it was earlier, but the problem persists, and I don’t have any more time to spend on it today, as I’m supposed to be doing, you know, work. 
Registered users, please excuse the problem for the time being. I am reluctant to do too much more about it for two reasons: (a) we’re about to change hosting providers (see the message here) and (b) when we do, I’m going to upgrade the Drupal installation to the newly released version 5, which is much slicker and smarter than the v.4.7.4 we’re using now. One or the other of these solutions will most likely fix the problem. (Which I privately suspect has something to do with the fact that our present hosting provider, GoDaddy, won’t let Drupal have the database access it needs to perform correctly. This is why the site’s search function is presently turned off.) Once the move to the new provider takes place, we’ll be able to implement the discussion forums and personal blogs and so on (Drupal truly is a rich and wonderfully equipped website-building tool, with more bells and whistles than any sane person could reasonably desire).
(sigh) Sorry about this.
[tags]The Big Meow, feline, wizard, cat, online, novel, Diane Duane, technical, website, problem[/tags]
(Like those UK commercials that showed things like giant hedgehogs running over tiny little trucks.)
Normally any time we hear the word “samurai” in a TV news story, Peter and I both wince, expecting to hear about somebody who’s run amuck somewhere with a cheap katana. But today, for a change, it’s something different.
Police are trying to trace a mysterious samurai sword-wielding vigilante who came to the rescue of two officers when they were being attacked by an armed gang.
The officers had been set upon after they tried to disrupt a burglary at a flat in Laygate, South Shields.
…One of [the burglars] lunged at a policeman with his knife – but just as he did so, a mysterious do-gooder appeared from nowhere and attacked [the burglar] with a samurai sword.
One of the burglars ran off, but was stopped by the stranger, who hit him on the arm with the sword.
He was arrested, along with another man from the flat, but in true superhero fashion the samurai man disappeared before police could speak to him.
Going to be interesting to see how this unfolds…
[tags]samurai, sword, katana, UK, news, Laygate, South Shields[/tags]
“Lots and lots and lots of heart.” …Well, one anyway.
Our local craft butcher is sufficiently old-fashioned and down-country that the less commonly seen meats still make a strong showing — remarkable (in the older sense of the word) in this time when Ireland is prosperous, and many people are turning their backs on memories of an economically difficult past. So we’re still able to get a lot of things that characteristically get lumped together in that vaguely uncomplimentary category, “variety meats”: among others, oxtail, whole tongue, sweetbreads, and my favorite of the whole lot, heart. (It’s beef heart I’ll be discussing here, though our butcher normally has lamb and pork heart as well.)
Too many people have this image of heart as an organ meat, vaguely icky and wobbly. This is just silly. Heart is a muscle meat, like steak: just a whole lot harder-working. Or else people think of it as something incredibly tough. Often this is the result of having eaten heart cooked by someone who didn’t know how to treat it. Like oxtail and shin, it comes from a hard-working part of the cow, and like them, it needs long slow cooking to bring out its best. But when handled properly its flavor compares favorably with theirs, or surpasses them.
Now then: recipes. There are some heart recipes out there on the Web, but there’s a lot of duplication, and in my opinion most of the originals aren’t worth much. Heart just doesn’t have the cachet of other types of beef (and there would also probably be people who think of it as “poor person’s food” and want nothing to do with it). However, I’ve got a heart recipe that’s worth passing on.
Some years ago the Irish phone company introduced Minitel here to see if it would become as popular as it had in France. This was just before the Web started to become readily accessible, and when that happened, the Irish version of Minitel promptly went under. But for a while we had a Minitel terminal, and over a year or so of using it I started investigating what culinary resources might be found on the network. And at some point or another I stumbled onto something fascinating: the Minitel site of a regional tripe butchers’ association. The site of Les Societé Anonyme des Tripiers de wherever had a recipe section: and there I found one of the best treatments for heart I’ve ever seen. It being France, much red wine is involved. (Surprise, surprise.)
When I saw a nice-looking beef heart at the butcher’s a week or so ago, I nabbed it and brought it home, and then started hunting through the computer for my disk version of Peter’s translation of the original recipe. I can’t find it. It may have been destroyed in a disk crash, or gotten itself shoved into an ancient .arc or .arj file that’s become corrupt. But I remember the generalities well enough, and the basic method is worth passing on.
“False friends! O, I could eat their hearts with garlic.” (Queen Prezmyra, The Worm Ourobouros)
(She’s a gourmet if nothing else, that lady.)
First go buy a beef heart, and then find your boning or filleting knife.
Trim off any exterior fat from the heart: you won’t want that in the final product. Slice through to whichever interior chamber you hit first — auricle or ventricle — and lay the heart out open. Slice away any vascular-looking material and the interior stringy bits (ligaments). (And if you’re already making faces, cut it out. This will be no worse than your average episode of CSI.)
Push the outside of the heart flat down against the cutting board and use the boning knife on it the same way you’d use it to remove the skin from the outside of a fish filet. (Depending on your knife and your skill, you may find it easier to cut the heart into two or three pieces, the long way — top to bottom — and operate on each of them separately.) Thinly slice away the outer membrany “skin”. There is also some membrane on the inside of the auricles / ventricles that looks less “beeflike”, which you may want to remove for the look of the thing.
Once the membranes have been removed, slice each chunk of heart muscle into cubes or cubish bits, half an inch wide or so. You should wind up with at least a pound and a half or two pounds of perfectly lean, dark red meat.
Put them in a glass or other nonreactive bowl. Add:
Most of a bottle of a rough red wine. Don’t get fancy about the wine. Chianti is a good choice. (I used a Rioja this time out because I couldn’t find a Chianti that looked cheap and tough enough: all the Chiantis hereabouts seem to have gone upmarket — you can’t find one of those straw-wrapped fiasci any more.)
Garlic. Peel and chop or smash up the cloves of an entire head of garlic.
Herbs. I had fresh ones available, and put in sage, rosemary, thyme and curly parsley. (Not visible in the picture: the ladybug / ladybird who hitched a ride in on the sage and nearly wound up in the marinade. He/she was quickly repatriated to the herb patch.)
Stir the whole business together, cover with plastic wrap, and put in the fridge to marinate for at least 24 hours, and 48 would be better.
Then:
Find at least half a pound of the smokiest bacon you can lay your hands on. (We use speck that we import a few times a year from a specialty butcher in Zurich.) Chop or cube it. In the heaviest large, tight-lidded casserole you have, sauté it in a little oil (olive oil works fine for this). Peel and chop two big onions (red, golden or white, it doesn’t seem to matter). Sauté the onions with the bacon until they start to go brown.
Add the heart and its marinade. Season with some salt and pepper. Add some more red wine if you feel the need: enough to cover the meat, anyway. Cover and put into a fairly slow oven (250°F / 120°C) and leave it there for at least three hours. Four might be more like it. At three hours, check for tenderness. If the meat seems tender enough (there won’t be any question about how it tastes: this is one of the great stews of the world), start considering what you want to do with the gravy — make a roux to thicken it, or else just reduce it, or just serve it as it is.
To serve on the side? This is always an issue. Mashed potatoes would be my choice. But Peter may start demanding eggnoodles, or his Mum’s herb dumplings, or spaetzle. It happens. Sometimes I even agree with him.
…Might as well surprise him. Time to go dig out the spaezlihöbel…
You didn’t disguise your identity as thoroughly as you may think you did. I will have my revenge.
Meanwhile:
1.What is your favorite Christmas carol/song?
“Fairytale of New York”, the Pogues.
2.White lights or multicolored?
White.
3. Do you have a cut tree, live tree or an artificial tree?
Artificial.
4. Eggnog, mulled cider, or hot chocolate?
Eggnog. And only one possible recipe, the one passed to me by the divine Miss S. Mulled cider?? You have to be kidding. Optional alternative: Gluhwein (see this video for one of the best places to see it made.)
5. Do you decorate your house with lights?
Only on the inside.
6. Do you write a Christmas letter?
Nope.
7. Do you like receiving Christmas letters/photos?
Don’t mind.
8. What is your favorite Christmas story/movie?
A Christmas Story.
9. Have you ever made a gingerbread house?
Yes. Sometimes repeatedly.
10. Poinsettias or holly?
Holly.
11. Do you display a nativity scene?
No.
12. Do you bake Christmas cookies?
Sometimes, usually ones from Festive Classics: Holiday Baking in the Swiss, German and Austrian Traditions.
13. Ham or turkey?
Turkey.
14. In what languages can you wish someone a Merry Christmas (without cheating)?
Merry Christmas
Frohe Weihnachten
Feliz Navidad
Joyeux Noel
15. Do you know all the words to Jingle Bells?
No.
16. Do you put presents under the tree?
No.
17. How do you eat a candy cane?
Only under duress. That ribbon candy, though, I really like that. Probably a good thing I can’t find it around here. 🙂
18. What is your biggest holidays pet peeve?
Not being able (without consequences) to run down the street shrieking “Io Saturnalia!” and insist that major public officials swap jobs with me for the day.
19. What is your favorite Christmas tradition?
Recovering from it.
20. What was the best present you ever got for Christmas?
A Patty Play Pal doll.
(And I’m adding two questions:)
21. What’s your favorite holiday TV special?
How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
22. What’s your favorite fictional holiday TV special?
The Six Tasks of Snowman Hank.
(sigh) OK, that’s over with.
(Disclaimer: The above should not be taken as evidence of adherence to any personal religion, discipline or belief system. Void where prohibited by natural law. NOT A FLYING TOY.)