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Then it's all just dust and dark
My poem "Lucan in Averno" has been accepted by ChiZine. It is the piece I wrote while translating Book 6 of the Pharsalia this summer, a project I really need to get back to. I have been without gruesome Silver Age necromancy for far too long.
People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy can now be found on the shelves of consenting bookstores everywhere (or at least Borders, Barnes & Noble, that sort of thing). The table of contents includes stories by Peter S. Beagle, Jane Yolen, Neil Gaiman, Theodora Goss, Michael Chabon, Rose Lemberg, Tamar Yellin, and Elana Gomel, so you can see why I might be pleased to count "The Dybbuk in Love" among them. Introduction by Ann VanderMeer. I am greatly looking forward to my contributor's copy.
I should ask my mother sometime where her recipe for plum pudding comes from. It can't have been handed down through her side of the family, but it steams for eight hours and is then tied up in brandy-soaked cheesecloth to steep and wait for Christmas, when it will be steamed a second time, doused in yet more brandy, and flamed. We don't use suet, but otherwise I think the recipe is reasonably traditional, meaning that the last several years have been spent tinkering with the fruits and spices in order to produce a pudding that everyone in my family will at least take a bite of. You never know. This year we seem to have created a fruitcake that people snack on. I'm very impressed; and I've eaten a lot of it. Tonight, we set up the tree.
People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy can now be found on the shelves of consenting bookstores everywhere (or at least Borders, Barnes & Noble, that sort of thing). The table of contents includes stories by Peter S. Beagle, Jane Yolen, Neil Gaiman, Theodora Goss, Michael Chabon, Rose Lemberg, Tamar Yellin, and Elana Gomel, so you can see why I might be pleased to count "The Dybbuk in Love" among them. Introduction by Ann VanderMeer. I am greatly looking forward to my contributor's copy.
I should ask my mother sometime where her recipe for plum pudding comes from. It can't have been handed down through her side of the family, but it steams for eight hours and is then tied up in brandy-soaked cheesecloth to steep and wait for Christmas, when it will be steamed a second time, doused in yet more brandy, and flamed. We don't use suet, but otherwise I think the recipe is reasonably traditional, meaning that the last several years have been spent tinkering with the fruits and spices in order to produce a pudding that everyone in my family will at least take a bite of. You never know. This year we seem to have created a fruitcake that people snack on. I'm very impressed; and I've eaten a lot of it. Tonight, we set up the tree.
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I'd love to see more of that Pharsalia translation, an it please you.
Glad to hear of the successful fruitcake. Enjoy your tree-setting!
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Thank you!
I'd love to see more of that Pharsalia translation, an it please you.
I'd love more of it. I need to organize my time.
It's all but an ark lark.
Plum pudding?
We don't use suet
*eek* Not really, but it's causing of a moment's pause to think of suet as something other than the stuff you hang out for birds in the winter that even the squirrels leave alone.
This year we seem to have created a fruitcake that people snack on.
Crazy talk.
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Thank you.
Plum pudding?
Also referred to in my family as a figgy pudding, although I believe the two are formally different species. A mass of dried fruits, spices, and brandy, with the requisite minimum of flour and shortening to hold it all together; it comes out to be very dark, very moist, and capable of triggering hangovers by proximity. It's one of those recipes that dates from the centuries when petrifying quantities of alcohol and nutmeg were de rigueur. I've never liked eating it very much, but I find it incredibly entertaining to make and set on fire.
Not really, but it's causing of a moment's pause to think of suet as something other than the stuff you hang out for birds in the winter that even the squirrels leave alone.
I'd like to have real suet to work with, because there are some crusts and minces I feel a bit like a fraud about, making them with butter. But I understand your reaction.
Crazy talk.
Sweet and tart cherries, cranberries, apricots, pineapple, blueberries, candied orange and lemon peel, almonds, a handful of chocolate chips and a thin binder of cake batter: kind of the Prohibition version of figgy pudding. In addition to the regular cakes, we made about a dozen as cupcakes and we have two left.
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Oh, interesting. The carrot and potato are not part of our makeup. Does hers use flour, or is that what the root vegetables are doing?
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We don't use suet
I could help with that for next year, if you wanted...
Anyway, save me some fruitcake...
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Want some Anakreon? I was noodling around with him a few days ago.
I could help with that for next year, if you wanted...
Sure. One of the reasons we don't use suet is that the shelf-stable stuff scares me.
Anyway, save me some fruitcake...
We sent you some fruitcake!
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Sure! I will assign him to my second-favorite student and her fellow
victimsClassical Historians next semester.But would still like more Pharsalia.
We sent you some fruitcake!
Heavens. Thank you!
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Could I have your recipe for plum pudding...?
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Thank you. I would, too.
Could I have your recipe for plum pudding...?
Totally. I'll send it with Anakreon.
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and, I'm also glad People of the Book is back available again.
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Thank you!
and, I'm also glad People of the Book is back available again.
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