Internationally Bestselling Quirky Children's Books; Adventurous Heroes Doing Good
Every time you have a choice, choose love.
Gabby the Dog
Every time you have a choice, choose the outside.
Every time you have a choice, choose treats.
Every time you have a choice, ditch the leash.
xo
Here’s this week’s Cooking With an Author recipe. The man in the house is still not a vegetarian. All appears lost. 🙂 Every time he has a choice, he chooses meat.
[ultimate-recipe id=”5805″ template=”default”]It’s a cooking blog redone. Why? Because I’ve been working for over 12 hours and I’m not done.
Yes, folks. I’m dialing it in. My apologies!
I gave up and am giving you all this – the Black Bean Soup that Reflects the State of My Inner Soul Right This Second Because I am DIRE.
Yeah.
Sometimes the world sucks and you need a dark soup to match your feelings. Am I right?
This is a new version of a black bean soup I wrote about before. You can never have enough black bean soup recipes. Can you?
Heatolive oil in soup pot over medium heat.
Stare at it until it shimmers.
Remember when you used to shimmer.
Sigh dramatically.
Throw in the onions, celery and carrot.
Sigh again because honestly? What is the point.
Put in salt, blood pressure be damned.
Stir once in awhile. Eventually the vegetable will get soft.
“Eventually” is 10 to 15 minutes. This is a much shorter ‘eventually’ than when waiting for your editor to return your email. But whatever.
Add in the smelly things – garlic, cumin and red pepper flakes.
Wonder if you’re a smelly thing? When did you last bathe? Was it before 2018? Join the club.
Cook until things smell more than you do – 30 seconds.
It’s time for the dark soul part of this soup. You are miserable, aren’t you? Yes, writer you are.
Add beans. Add broth.
Put the heat on medium high and watch it simmer. Reduce it so it only simmers gently. If only YOU were simmering gently, but honestly? The state of the world makes you SIMMER INTO ROARING, doesn’t it? Yes. Yes. It does.
Soup is not you though. So simmer GENTLY for 30 minutes, or else it will boil over and stick to the pot and believe me, you do not have the emotional reserves to deal with that mess.
Put about 4 cups into a blender (make sure not to overload your blender because it is hot and you will get burned and you probably don’t have the medical insurance to deal with that if you are an American writer).
Blend carefully.
You can also use a hot-pink immersion blender if you are tired of the darkness of this soup, your soul, and this world.
JUST BE CAREFUL!
Put the blended stuff back in the soup pot. Mix. Add in cilantro, lime juice, salt and pepper.
Sigh.
Eat it.
Sigh more.
Dog Verdict – Isn’t this not good for dogs?
My Verdict – Yep. Uh-huh.
ENHANCED, the follow-up to FLYING is here! And the books are out of this world. Please buy them and support a writer.
The last TIME STOPPERS BOOK is out and I love it. You should buy it because it’s empowering and about friendship and bias and magic. Plus, dragons and elves.
If you would like to purchase signed copies of my books, you can do so through the awesome Sherman’s Book Store in Bar Harbor, Maine or the amazing Briar Patch. The books are also available online at places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
For signed copies – email barharbor@shermans.com for Sherman’s or email info@briarpatchbooks.comand let them know the titles in which you are interested. There’s sometimes a waiting list, but they are the best option. Plus, you’re supporting an adorable local bookstore run by some really wonderful humans. But here’s the Amazon link, too!
You can buy prints of my art here. Thank you so much for supporting my books and me and each other. I hope you have an amazing day.
A new episode of Dogs are Smarter Than People, the quirky podcast with writing tips, life tips and a random thought came out yesterday! Check it out, like and subscribe!
In order to make a good book, a break-out novel, you have to have inherent conflict, opposing forces that both want something.
This is my house.
I want to not eat meat.
Everyone else wants to eat meat. I think it’s wasteful to make separate meals all the time (no-meat, meat).
So, like any good protagonist, I’m attempting to convince Shaun and the dogs to eat vegetarian meals. But, I am easily bored so I give the recipes a humorous writer-twist. And that brings us to this squishy squash soup recipe that I made this week. It was creamy and delightful and you can add things to it like cilantro!
It’s squash. It’s soup. It’s creamy. It’s orange. That’s got to be good, right?
Find a medium stock pot and melt the butter in a medium stockpot. Turn it on medium-lowish heat. Feel like this is how your book feels – sort of mid-list, sort of squishy. Ponder with angst.
Once the butter is melted, stop staring at it and put the leeks in there.
They have to sweat.
So do you, right? Writing is sweat for the heart, grit for the soul, an endurance sport.
Stir it once in a while. That’s how your agent responds to you, right? Once in awhile. Stir until the leeks are soft but not brown.
This takes about 5 minutes.
This is much quicker than anything in the publishing world.
Except mean tweets. Mean tweets are fast.
This looks kind of cool. Admire the leeks. How your book is like them. Good smelling, soft yet not burnt.
Add the squash, nutmeg, pepper, and some salt.
Stir it around once in awhile for another 5 minutes.
Add the sherry.
For the next 2-3 minutes let the sherry hang out in there.
If it is not against your religion, drink sherry straight from the bottle. That’s just what happens when there is nobody helping you cook.
Do not judge yourself. That’s what reviewers are for.
Add enough stock to barely cover the vegetables.
This is sort of like the publicity budget for your book – just enough to cover the basics.
Drink more sherry. Wipe it off your chin.
Okay. It’s breakout novel … I mean … soup… time.
Turn the heat to high. Make it boil.
Feel satisfied. That’s success right there.
Now reduce the heat to a simmer. Control that simmer like you control your readers’ emotions and keep it there for 20 minutes.
The squash should be fork tender like your readers’ hearts.
Add milk.
Add the 2 tablespoons cream.
Blend until smooth.
This is scary because it is hot so be careful. If you are using a regular blender and not an immersion blender DO NOT TRY TO DO IT ALL AT ONCE! This is like a manuscript. You can’t just throw it all in there for two seconds and call it good. There are steps to blending just like there are steps to revision.
Add however much salt, pepper, sherry, and sherry vinegar you need to make it taste good.
If it seems bland go raid the spice rack and add cumin or curry or open the fridge and squeeze some hot sauce in there – a TB or more to taste.
Once it is in the bowl, put cream on top so it seems fancy.
Dog Verdict: WHERE IS THE BACON?
Man Verdict: This would be better with bacon, honestly
Carrie Verdict: Cilantro is the new bacon!
I’m on WERU today, Thursday, at 10 a.m. EST. You can call in and ask me stuff. I’ll be talking about writing and books. The link is here.
Time Stoppers’s third book comes out this summer. It’s been called a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, but with heart. It takes place in Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine. I need to think of awesome ways to promote it because this little book series is the book series of my own middle grade heart. Plus, I wrote it for the Emster. Plus, it is fun.
And finally, the podcast DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE is still chugging along. Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness. We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.
