by Christine | Blog Appearances, Writing
Crescent Moon Press Memorial Day Weekend Bash~! Three Day Blog Tour
May 24th, 25th & 26th
Prizes at every stop!!! Grand Prize ~ Nook or Kindle, Your Choice!!!
Every stop along the way will have a posted quest. Sign up for the newsletter or blog (on mine, it’s going with the RSS feed!) then email your quest answer to the author to enter for great prizes.
Complete all blog tour stops, all three days, to enter into the grand prize drawing… A Nook or Kindle, Your Choice plus BONUS a dozen digital CMP books!!!
My participation begins tomorrow TUESDAY May 24th, so come on back!
Full itinerary will be posted on the CMP blog. All stops must be completed to qualify for the Grand Prize. You can join the games late, no problem! All quests must be completed by May 26th end of day.
All Winners Posted on CMP blog by June 4th. Good luck!
by Christine | Wine Friday
Today I’m talking about the Naked Grape wines. Specifically, their Pinot Noir. Again, it’s on special at my local Vons grocery for $5.99 but usually retails for close to $10. They have a gamut of wines, which I’m sure I’ll get to, as long as the price stays below my $10 mark.
By the way – every now and then I will pull out a good to great bottle of wine, either one given to us, drunk with friends, or in our stash from dashing up to wine country. And occasionally I may highlight a $15 bottle of wine – but in this economy and with the current income level of all my friends, I’ll be keeping it mostly under $10.
So, to get back to the Naked Grape. I’m not sure why they came up with this name, unless this is the company that bought the name of Naked Chardonnay from the then Four Vines Winery (now it’s Cypher and they’re located on highway 46 in central California, Paso Robles – not that they’re one of my FAVORITE wineries or anything – ahem). If so, then all right, I understand. At any rate, their label says they are “Vinted and bottled by Grape Valley Wine Company in Modesto, California”. So it sounds like they don’t have their own vineyards but buy grapes and make wine.
Hey, they’re not alone.
Their Pinot Noir, according to the label, is “medium bodied and rich with aromas of black cherry and blueberry”.
Excuse me while I inhale.
Um, I’m getting nothing but cold waftings. Pardon me while I go test the wine that I opened 30 minutes ago rather than the dregs left over from last night’s dinner.
Ahh, that’s better…now as soon as someone can tell me how to get my wine glasses clean WITHOUT the scent of dishwasher soap in it, I’ll be grateful.
Back to the scent of the wine…okay, I admit, I smell fruit. And yes, I know what a blueberry and what a black cherry smells like. This just smells like – fruit. Not even especially grape.
My take on the wine? It’s drinkable. (taking a quick taste…) Yep, drinkable. Not, maybe, as good an all around sipping wine as the Smoking Loon, but definitely drinkable and fine with food (we had it with dinner last night, and since there’s a new bottle open and dinner is in the oven…my guess is we’ll have it with dinner tonight).
So if you’re looking for a wine that doesn’t break the bank, try the Naked Grape Pinot Noir. If you like it enough, it might even make a good bottle to take when you’ve been invited over to a friend’s house for dinner.
At any rate, it couldn’t hurt!
My Rating: The Naked Grape Pinot Noir (not dated) is >Drinkable<
My Rating System:
Undrinkable
Barely Drinkable (best if it’s the second or third bottle of the night)
Drinkable
Very Drinkable
This is MY wine, you slut! Stay away!
by Christine | Blog Appearances, Observations
Just wanted to let you know – I’ll be at Rochelle Weber’s website all this week. As well, tomorrow I’ll be over at Castles and Guns with another interview.
Plus…I’m finally getting the blog up to speed, based upon a class I took in Blogging by Kristen Lamb (now, don’t laugh! Some of us need more help than normal, lol!). In a week or two I plan to be blogging at least twice a week – Gardening and Cooking on Mondays, and All About Affordable Wines on Fridays.
Hope you come back soon and check it out!
by Christine | Uncategorized, Writing
I have a confession to make. My latest book has been intractable. Or maybe that’s just me? Anyway, words aren’t working, plots aren’t cohesive, characters keep slipping their reins and changing their spots. It’s enough to make even the sanest writer wiggy.
I did what I could. For instance, I went over everyone’s motivations and conflicts. I replotted everything from the Big Bad Troublemaker’s point of view. Which gave me all sorts of things to throw at the Hero and the Heroine. All good, right? And I came up with a long list of scenes to write.
I thought I was set until I got to the actual writing. Every action seemed to have to be written. He got into the car. She buckled her seat belt. They breathed. They looked at each other. He started the car. See what I mean? I bored myself to tears.
Two things came to my rescue. First off, Savvy Authors is having their May bootcamp challenge. I’m going to be writing 60k this month, or 2,000 words a day. Okay. I can handle that as I’m not currently working a day job and my children are old enough to take care of themselves. I’m with a fantastic group of authors and we’re all kicking ass on our manuscripts (I’m not about to let them down!).
But I still had that …and then they went to the office, and then they went to kill the demon, and then they… well, you get the idea. I had that problem. Which is where Twitter saved my ass.
Excuse me? Why did you giggle? Oh, you’re not on Twitter. That’s okay. I fought it for a long time, too. But you know what? Right now it’s the single most powerful tool I have for getting words on the page.
Behold – I present to you the power of #1k1hr. The first time I saw that flash by on Twitter, (I believe it was Skylar Kade that I first saw using it), I admit I was intrigued. They were usually talking about how many words they had gotten done during the past hour.
Oh. OH! One thousand words in one hour. I GET it! So when Zoe Archer put out a call last week or so for anyone up for #1k1hr, I hopped in. Why not? It wasn’t a marriage – it was simply someone to hold me accountable for my wordage. Heck, she’s a fabulous writer and I didn’t want to look stupid in front of her, so add that in to the equation, too.
We began at the :15 (since on Twitter, not everyone is in the same time zone, we leave the hour off…it’s either at the top of the hour, the :15, the :30, or – well, you understand) and I wrote like mad. Every time I wanted to stop, I’d look at my word count, check the clock, and keep going.
I’ll admit that first hour I didn’t make 1k. But you know what? I had more words than I would have if I’d been going it alone. And now after getting the hang of it I can usually pull more than 1k in 1hr.
Since then I’ve hooked up with Cid Tyer, Suzan Isik, and Kat Jameson for #1k1hr and of course, I’m still bumping into Zoe Archer and Skylar Kade. Is it working? Well – last week I almost wrote 3000 words.
This week? Sunday in two separate #1k1hr sprints I wrote 2454. Monday I did two and a half #1k1hr sprints and wrote 3297. Yesterday, I made it to 3662 words in another two and a half #1k1hr sprints. So you tell me. Is #1k1hr working, or not?
If you’re not already on Twitter, join up and find me at @CCAshworth. I’m almost always up for a #1k1hr – join me, won’t you?
By the way. These words I’m writing? They’re much more interesting than the “…and then they went to the office, and then they went to kill the demon, and then they…” words I got down last week. Are they perfect? Of course not – this is still a first draft. But they’re getting me closer to “the end” – and that, in the long run, is the only thing that matters.
60K in a month? Bring it on. I am SO there.
by Christine | Cooking, Observations
It’s been awhile since I cooked something adventurous. Since we’re always looking for flavorful vegetarian dishes, I decided to work with eggplant (totally forgetting that by itself, it’s just not flavorful). Last night, I tackled a recipe from Food & Wine Magazine, one that didn’t look complicated (just work-intensive, like so many of their recipes). The recipe is in a section of the magazine that highlighted the “new” red wines.
I made Mushroom Stuffed Eggplant from their April 2011 issue (pg 134). This recipe apparently pairs well with Xinomavro which was compared to Oregon Pinot Noir (but the Xino tends to be more tannic, and goes best with hearty dishes), but not having a plane available to hop to Greece for a bottle or two (and not wanting to go wine hunting after a grueling yoga class), I settled for a solid Pinot Noir that I know and like a lot, from Blackstone. I can usually get it for under $6 on sale at Vons. (But the whole wine thing is another blog post!)
Well, I made the stuffed part – I did what I was told, cut the meat of the eggplant out (which is NOT easy -I needed to drink a full 4 oz of wine to get through it) leaving a 1/4″ thick shell. Then I salted it and let it sweat for 30 minutes (while preparing the stuffing – dry baguette cut into cubes and mixed with red wine; cut mushrooms and sauteed them on the stove; sauteed the cut up eggplant on the stove; sauteed a yellow onion with garlic and a bit of cumin on the stove, mixed those three together. Then I wiped out the eggplant shells, rubbed them all over with olive oil, put them cut side down in a pan with 1/4 cup of water, covered them with foil, and baked for 45 minutes.
Yeah. 45 minutes. By the time that was done baking, in happy anticipation I lifted off the foil and prepared to turn the eggplant over to stuff them.
Except, the eggplants were flat. And soggy. And burned to the pan. All three, which kind of blew my mind. WTF? I downed a short glass of wine to think this out. Quickly ditching the whole “stuffed” thing, I got out my trusty 8×8 pan, sprayed it with cooking spray, and then mixed the stuffing together – bread cubes, mushrooms, eggplant, onions and garlic. Checking the recipe, I noticed it called for “young” pecorino.
Um. Excuse me? “Young” pecorino? Not only not knowing what that is, nor where I would be able to purchase it, I tossed in the scant handful left of Trader Joe’s shaved cheese mix (parmesean, romano, and asiago cheese) plus another half cup of mozzarella. A teaspoon of salt and pepper each, and then into the oven it went.
The recipe wanted me to up the oven temp to 425. I saw that as a waste, so kept it at 350 for 15 minutes, then put it under the broiler 4″ away from the flame for 4 minutes. It came out crispy on top, tender inside, and nicely cheesy.
I did make substitutions along the way – the recipe called for a red onion, which I forgot to buy, so I subbed a yellow onion. It also called for a full pound of mushrooms – I knew I had an 8 oz package in the fridge, so thought I was set. It wanted a day-old baguette – um, sorry, baguettes NEVER last more than one meal at my house – so I bought a fresh one, cut it up, and toasted the cubes in a dry pan on the stove on really high heat for about five minutes. Oh, and it also wanted a full teaspoon of cumin added. We’re not big cumin fans at my house, so I only added 1/4 tsp.
Recipe upshot?
Taste-wise, it gets a solid B (and maybe that was because I didn’t “follow” the recipe). Overall it was bland except for hints of the cumin and of course the terrific cheese I’d sprinkled in (though on second thought, perhaps a sharper cheese like feta would have been better). Prep-wise, it gets a definite D. I think I could take this recipe and modify it for people who actually work and don’t have a year to spend in the kitchen making dinner. This might be a really great stuffing for bell peppers; the recipe itself wanted more of a punch taste-wise (perhaps that was the cumin’s job?), and bell pepper would certainly add that. Even browned spiced ground beef or turkey (not too much, maybe a scant cup) would give it the extra oomph it needs.
But – yeah, overall kind of bland and that definitely could have been my fault. But it makes me think – why did the F&W folks pair a wine that goes best with hearty dishes with THIS dish? O.o
I don’t think I’ll be doing much with eggplant in the future. As my hubby says, eggplants are just not worth the effort. Except for Eggplant Parmigiana, but I prefer to order that one out!
